OOC discussion

[Omen of Peace]

Seems Mael has contributed all he could to the exploration. Yes, "Oh my" is all he can give.

[Brainpiercing]

Seems Mael has contributed all he could to the exploration. Yes, "Oh my" is all he can give.

WEELLL... we're not quite done yet, are we? However, at this point you just have to give spotlight to the tracker.

That being said, tracking makes little enough sense in a high-magic world....

[Omen of Peace]

WEELLL... we're not quite done yet, are we? However, at this point you just have to give spotlight to the tracker.

Oh, I don't mind it. I just tried to do more.

I almost had Mael's lil' helper come out, but it wasn't truly necessary. Plus it may cause friendly fire once the Mindsight scanners go off... actually that should be fun.

[Surreal]

Argh, sorry guys I've been swamped lately. I've barely even been reading the CO board these days. I'll try to update in the next day or two.

[Brainpiercing]

I was away for a week of skiing in France, now I'm back. Just a heads-up.

[Omen of Peace]

Where exactly ?

Hope you had fun. I didn't go skiing this year but I'll likely go next year.

[Brainpiercing]

Where exactly ?

Hope you had fun. I didn't go skiing this year but I'll likely go next year.

Trois Vallées in the Alps, it's a huge resort. It was great, excellent weather, good snow, and not too crowded.

[Omen of Peace]

Yeah, it's fairly well-known. I've only been to Val Thorens in summer though.
It wasn't too crowded because you had the wisdom not to drop by during the French holiday.

[Brainpiercing]

Yeah, it's fairly well-known. I've only been to Val Thorens in summer though.
It wasn't too crowded because you had the wisdom not to drop by during the French holiday.

We were in St.Martin de Belleville, which is an actual village, unlike some of the other resort villages. It's quite nice, really.

I guess it could get more crowded during the holidays. There were still some french people there, lots of Brits, some russians, some dutch, lots of Germans and 2 Americans. (Yes, well, the only 2 I saw ).

[Surreal]

Ugh sorry guys, thesis has not been kind to me lately. Writing feels stilted... I really don't know what to say other than just parroting what info was given to me.

[Smudgy]

I'm sad to say that I am not going to be able to participate in this game any longer. I really just don't have the time to pay close attention to this game, or this entire website for that matter. I just can't devote time to D&D anymore in general. This will likely be my last post here on BG. Brainpiercing, feel free to do whatever you like with Agnak. Make him an NPC, kill him off, write him out of the story line, whatever works best for you. Again, sorry for the inconvenience. It's been fun gentlemen!

Regards,

Smudgy

[Brainpiercing]

I'm sad to see you go, Smudgy. Well... good luck to you in the future.

[Omen of Peace]

May luck be with you !
D&D will find you again sooner or later.

[Brainpiercing]

D&D will find you again sooner or later.

It always happens. Resistance is futile.

[Brainpiercing]

I'm thinking of introducing a few Skill revisions, what do you guys think:

1) The Hide skill:

- You can make hide checks using Soft Cover, such as foliage, other creatures, etc. in an equivalent manner as using Concealment to make a hide check.

- If you are using adjacent cover to hide you are always considered CLOSER to the cover than your target, hence your opponent does not gain an AC bonus to your attacks while you remain hidden.

- You usually have to move at least 5ft to make a hide check as a free action. If you are behind cover or meet another relevant condition for being able to hide (such as with HiPS) you can make a hide check at a -20 penalty while taking offensive actions (casting spells with a notable visual display excluded) and remain hidden, BUT even an opponent who doesn't spot you knows which square you are in, and can attack your square. You gain 50% concealment against that foe while you remain in the same square, until he actually spots you. You may use that concealment to make another hide check during the next action that allows this, other modifiers pending.

- If you are hidden at the start of your turn any enemy who does not know which square you are in and whom you attack from range or in melee during your turn is treated as flat-footed for one attack (per enemy), whether you had to move out of cover to reach him, or not, and whether he sees you coming or not. If you are hidden while threatening a square the target of the first AoO you make is treated as flat-footed against that attack, too.
If you are hidden and remain behind cover or meet another relevant condition for being able to hide you can attempt a hide check at a -20 penalty as part of an attack action to remain hidden after the attack, as above, but each attacked enemy will know which square you attacked from. If the enemy can't spot you, you gain 50% concealment against that foe while you remain in that square.

- After attacking you are otherwise revealed to anyone with LoS to you, anyone within LoS may make Spot checks vs. your continued hide checks. As above, this does not lift the flat-footed condition off your targets (for one attack/target) during your turn.

- CAdv rules for crossing open spaces apply. If you are within hearing distance of a foe you must make appropriate Move Silently checks to avoid alerting them, too.

- To simplify all the rolling involved, it is possible to make one Hide and one Move Silently check at the beginning of a "scene". These rolls will be used, with the appropriate modifiers, in all situation throughout the scene, UNTIL they are beaten by an opponent. It is not possible to take 10 or 20 on these rolls, nor is it possible to use single-roll abilities with limited uses/day to improve them. Enemies can make spot or listen checks where appropriate. Once the "Scene Roll" is overcome, a new roll is allowed, but not mandatory, which is then in turn used until it is overcome.

2) The Spot skill

Basically I want to increase the ranges at which this works. I made a long post about percentile terrain modifiers, and the actions necessary to spot. BUT that's a pretty complicated system. In the meantime, I would like to ad-lib some things:

- The base increment by which you get a distance modifier of -1 on your spot skill is 30ft, not 10ft. You automatically notice things which are not hidden within 30ft of you. (i.e. you need to make a DC of 1 to see them.)
- The fixed view distance limits in the terrain descriptions are discarded.
- You can make a spot check as a free action each round to notice things which are not specifically hiding while taking at least a move action to only move
- You must take at least a move action to only spot each round to take 20 on a spot check (for the usual 2 minutes).
- If you are mounted or have other means of travelling without taking move actions (such as while gliding) you can take 20 on a spot check all the time, as long as you can direct your mount as a free action. (i.e. with the mounted combat feat, with enough ranks in ride, etc.)
- You still get a free-action reactive spot check against anything that tries to hide from you. You can't retry this check as a free action if it fails, you have to use at least a move action to study a limited field of view. You can take 20 to find a hidden creature by taking at least a move action to spot within a limited FOV for 20 rounds. You CAN roll during the first 19 of those rounds to find creatures earlier. If several creatures are hidden you can only spot several of them with the same check if they are within a 30ft spread of each other.

- I don't know if you should also be able to take a standard action to spot. There doesn't seem to be a reason not to allow this, but... I don't know if this is usually legal.

[Omen of Peace]

HIDE
This is pretty involved - thankfully Mael is not a hidey kind of person.
It seems to make Hiding more powerful than it already is.

- Soft Cover: should one really be able to hide between a single creature of one's size ? (A Goliath behind a Dwarf ? ) I see the intent, and I think it's good, but perhaps there should be a penalty (-5 ?) when there's only soft cover involved.

- why flatfootedness instead of losing Dex to AC ? It makes sense in that Uncanny Dodgers won't be too bothered, but it means no immediate action...
I guess my point is that if you know the guy is here, even if you can't see you might be able to react somewhat when he does appear ; but it's a matter of taste.

- the Scene Roll mechanic seems exploitable: if your roll was low, reroll when it's overcome. When it gets high, keep it (some enemies might still be able to overcome it but then your chances of doing better are low). It's like a bunch of almost-free rerolls ("almost" since you likely get tagged every time it's overcome).


SPOT
- "You can make a spot check as a free action each round to notice things which are not specifically hiding while taking at least a move action to only move" : I didn't get that sentence, more specifically the 2nd part. Who takes the move action - spottee or spotter ? If you need to use a move action, I'd phrase it as "As part of a move action used only to move, you can make a spot check as a free action..."

- Taking 20 while mounted ? I see the point of being freer to observe when not having to pick one's exact path, but compared to staying 2 minutes in the same spot... Perhaps specify a maximum speed ? But overall perhaps it should only be "taking 15" or something like that, otherwise the trivial exploit is... to mount your horse rather than take 2 min every time you want to make a Spot check.

The rest seems fine at first sight.

[Brainpiercing]

Well, arguably hiding right now is not that powerful. I must say it's one of the most poorly balanced skills, because some races/templates get OBSCENE bonuses, BUT it's actually not so easy to exploit it, or so it seems.

Hide:
- Well... I see your point about the sizes. Hmmm. Still, I don't think it's THAT far fetched. Skills don't have to be limited to the range of humanly possible.
- What is the normal condition when you are unaware of a person hiding? Is it losing dex bonus or flat-footed? I just want to use the normal effect
- We could make the scene roll just stick for a given scene/encounter, instead of allowing re-rolls, OR we could force re-rolls each time the character is spotted. It makes sense to hide "again" after you have been spotted.

Spot:
- Right, "As part of a move action used only to move you can make one spot check as a free action..."
- Of course you need the two minutes to take 20 while mounted. Now... this is not supposed to be realistic, just consistent. Granted, normally you should remain stationary to retry spot checks. However, going by the normal action mechanics of the game you CAN take spot checks as move actions all the time, and hence could assume to be taking 20 every 2 minutes. Instead of doing that, I think it's easier to just assume a character who wishes to do so is always aware of his surroundings. Remember, this is just a spot check to notice things in the vicinity which are not hidden. You get a reactive spot check with the normal distance penalty to spot hidden creatures, and need to examine the area in detail to take 20 on spotting them. Obviously if you've failed your spot check you must have some other indication of the presence of an enemy to even try to pinpoint him.
We could add to this paragraph, though, that whenever your mount produces vigourous motion, i.e. when it moves faster than at a hustle, you take a -5 penalty to the spot roll, hence effectively taking 15. OR we could just extend the penalties for ranged combat to spotting while mounted - except I find these a bit harsh for just spotting.

The entire system I thought up was here:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7718.msg254574#msg254574

I thought it tied together rather well, once you have all the modifiers down. Unfortunately it's rather complicated.

[Omen of Peace]

Hiding is indeed weak unless you invest in it. But when you do, oh boy. Collar of Umbral Metamorphosis + Darkstalker is kinda like perma-Invisibility except only Spot works against you.

I believe successful hiding is like invisibility (loss of Dex to AC for the opponent, total concealment, +2 bonus to attack and the attacker does not know in which square you are), no ? My 3.5E knowledge has gotten a little rusty.

ACK for the changes proposed.

[Brainpiercing]

I'm going to wait a bit for Surreal or Snizor to get a post in, too.

And now I have one less player, and I never even had the number of players than I wanted. And no recruitement attempts of late have come to fruition. That is, only the first applicants ever have actually completed characters and gotten into the game. Everyone else chickened. Ack.

[Omen of Peace]

No problem with waiting for the others.

I think I joined after the start ?
Though I did almost chicken out after a few months. 

I actually still game on the WotC PbP forum - there are some cool people there (overall much less optimization-oriented than here, but it's not a drawback in my mind) and they like roleplaying.
If you ever decide it's worth the headache and if everybody agrees to it, we could transition there at some point (I'd help as needed). Nowadays you can have a sub-board for a game, though I think you have more modest Moderator powers than here.
(the RA board: http://community.wizards.com/realadventures/go/forum/viewboard )