Talk:RP: Dinner with Egg

Rolf

I'm not sure whether Mose expressed his concerns about Rolf as clearly as Mattie did on the Invasion page before now. If he did, Germ would definitely have put his prodigious investigative skills into looking for clues in the sewers. If not, he will put those skills into looking at the items we recovered from and recalling facts about the sewers (faces, items, papers, etc). In either case, can I get some rolls to see if there is anything to tie what we saw down there with Rolf and the Wydmoor Church? --Msallen

Unfortunately, I don't think Mose was smart enough to remember Rolf, he certainly didn't mention him. I did bring it up out of game a couple of weeks ago (via email where I also suspected Edrell), but I don't think Mose would have brought it up. :( I do think it's an important area to research to see if anyone knows where Rolf went, was last seen, etc. -Mattie

Well, its probably fair to say that we've collectively put him on our radar now. Most of the stuff on the Magus on the Wiki, except for the bit about his role in the fire, was all from Germ's pre-Silverwalker Gather Info work when he was trying to get the lay of the land and figure out the major players in Wydmoor. So we've known about the figure and his role for some time, and we could have legitimately come across him. Also, I was confusing this guy with the Hardiarch, which is why I mentioned the Church before. --Msallen

Eh, he mostly kept to himself and absconded before you had "all access" passes. But, while you might know something of his reputation before etc., anything more recent you'll probably have to ask someone about -gm

Misc

GM TAG OMG!!! -Game Master

I'm going to claim some of the parts where Egg speaks for Germ as Germ actually saying it. It will be a little less wall-of-text and have a bit more of a real flow--I'm not sure Egg could quite dominate the conversation like that except that you got a bug up your ass to type. --Msallen

I think you'd be surprised. He's quite at home as a lecturer and expository machine. Just like any good researcher. -gm

Prisoners

Who are the prisoners? Also, you suggested I could make some knowledge (local) rolls to identify some of the bodies down there. Anyone have knowledge (local) for aid another rolls? --Msallen

Nope. Just my +11 --Msallen

What? Are you talking to yourself? Check the notes, but I thought that one or two of the Clerics were taken alive. If not, I can excise them. -GM

I don't remember if it was my chat page or eggs chat page, but somewhere you suggested that I might be able to recognize the wererat body at least. --Msallen

Is your Local:Wydmoor going to meet or beat DC20 when taking a 10? -gm

Yeah, its +11 --Msallen

Also, does it seem like they knew we were comming down there? I get the impression they didn't. Germ was curious to get the sense that this was an ambush planned by Naprid, and it doesn't seem like it was. --Msallen

Nope, you cold got the drop on them. They did have a lot of spells memorized(hold person, wall of stone, etc) that were very combat oriented in nature. FWTW, if anything. -GM

Does anyone have a rundown on which prisoners were captured alive? -gm

I remember there were two that weren't outright killed. We definitely wrapped up the last game with the intent to bring them back for questioning by Egg.

LE

(gm: you can assume Egg has been filled in on everything from the quest notes that the whole party knows, but probably no secrets other being put onto LE's [can someone clarify what this means? --sarah] [I assume the wording refers to how Egg was assigned to research the mystical tie you have to the historical wizard. --Mattie]. He thinks Al is a human, probably, and might not know that Kimika was a spy for the hadriarch)

Yeah, mattie has it. Egg knows something about LE's .... problem, but only because he was specifically instructed to dig more deeply into it. You can assume that anything that is "general knowledge," ie: most of the quest notes, he's already up to date about it. For anything kind of shameful or secret, I'm pretty sure G-man did *not* fill him in about that stuff, so unless a party member brings those things up (Kimi's early two facedness, etc.) he won't know anything about them. -gm

That's right in terms of what Egg knows. He knows a bit about LE's situation because I wanted him to figure out how our transfer of Arrasti's funds to the Travellers' Temple was blocked. Or, if he has been digging into any of your backgrounds, I've instructed him to be very secreteve about it, which is the same for all practical purposes ;) --Msallen

OOC What to do next?

I was expecting our next steps were to interrogate (nicely) the clerics and then tell Naprid what we learn and about our success? Why the planning about what high-level task to do when we don't have enough info to decide yet? I'd assume more would fall out of that conversation than what we could plan for ourselves. Also, unless it's by design, we should be careful talking about refugee helping because Mose is going to jump on that like there's no other option available. -Mattie

OOC getting Mose to do that was sort of Germ's plan. He thinks we should help the refugees--preferrably get them into the city. He also thinks we should start making more decisions ourselves and not wait for others to tell us what to do.

I agree we should start figuring out what to ask the prisoners. Should we play the game where LE/Egg detect thoughts while Germ interviews? --Msallen

FWiW - This may not have come up in game yet, but LE gave up her ability to detect thoughts. I don't know how to address any of that other stuff, or even if I'm supposed to? -gm

 :( I'm sorry to hear that. I was getting all excited about this plan I had where Germain steers the detainee's thoughts while LE reads their mind. Egg needs to get some telepathy spells stat. Otherwise, no, nothing for GM to do here untill we start questioning. --Msallen

Kimika has Detect Thoughts from the Knowledge domain, by the way, and she's no fan of those clerics. -Mattie

Thanks for pointing that out in the main page--I missed it somehow here. Kimmy doesn't have the right moral standing to be generally useful to me, but she'll definitely be able to help this time! --146.127.253.45

You'll have to wait till her spells reset to do that, but otherwise not a problem. She currently has Identify as her prepared 2nd level domain spell. -gm

Also don't forget that for feeding frenzies, Kimika and Hadriarch could feed a huge number of refugees with Feed the Masses. -Mattie

Also, don't forget War School spells are in the process of being errata'd to include a small XP cost depending on the level of the spell. Probably something on the order of 5xp per spell level per casting. Either that or removing them outright for game balance. I put them on the wiki specifically to help with the hobgoblin stalemate of last year, but I'm concerned this class of spells is fucking up my christmas without checks on it. Of course, my concern in this regard is more about combat and summon spells and less about Feed the Masses, since every day you guys want to deal with Feed the Masses is essentially a day you're not doing anything else. And, since the food disappears after 24 hours anyway, you can either commit kimi to Feeding the Masses or Fighting, but not both without some difficulty. -gm

Yeah, but it's easily as much food as we could come up with teleporting out of country, though the hat itself could feed 700 people for a day if it ever used all 15 charges. You wouldn't hear complaints from me if you got rid of the Summon/Legion spells... if those were used against us, we'd be pretty messed-up and we definitely have it coming to us, karma-wise. :( I don't think the others are really too unbalanced, especially if they add more material costs or something... The others don't seem so crazy as to require XP... I'm curious to see which way you go, though. -Mattie

As you say, the only real balance issues are with things that have both tremendous AND persistent power, and the Summon Herd is the biggest example of that as Al is starting to prove. Though, honestly, from a practical point of view I just hate that spell because it breaks bullet-time combats logistically as much as it does balance-wise. I don't hate the spell, but I always intended these spells to be strategic, not tactical. For the other ones, an increase in the GP value of the material component is probably more than adequate, but for the summon family I'm still leaning strongly toward small XP cost, as well. Hopefully this clarification sets minds at ease. -gm

You might have mentioned this before, but another thought is to also require the Summon ones to have a Concentration cost to maintain. Which keeps the casters distant from combat and some people there to defend them or the spell would fall... Just a random thought that might encourage it to be used more strategically (seiges, harassment, etc) and less used as part of bullet-time... -Mattie