Waterbrick Down

"If it's gold your after, I'd imagine you could have found better work than this, but to each his own. So web-tweaker? Some sort of seamstress I assume? Your people big tailors?"

Boris's eyes widened slightly at the weapon. "Impressive bit of cutlery. As for my tongue, I'll make sure to keep two eyes trained on it, wouldn't want it walking off anywhere." His blood-pudding having arrived, Boris dug in. "So NazGuz the Infinite, here for the gold, the glory, and all the promises of fame and stardom?"

Boris smirked slightly, "Oh we do just fine, maybe a little fear here and there, but you'll find Eubric Freeport is pretty comfortable with folks that only have two legs." The cleric took another sip of his wine, "Can't speak for how you'll be greeted in the streets though. New to town?"

Boris strolled into the hall, mace slung over his shoulder. Seeing no new quest postings the vampire headed for the bar, wedging his way besides a dwarf and an oversized arachnid he obtained a glass of wine and an order of blood-pudding. The cleric sipped from his glass as he mused to himself. "At this rate, I imagine we'll soon be catering to demons."

Also if you're looking for ideas Jebs created a pyromancer a while back.

There's been plenty of examples of well written disliked in-game characters (Pretzel, Guts, Throlar [to some extent]). Too often we as players want to be so chummy with each-other that that spills into our role-play and our characters are agreeable with everyone. Good old fashioned rivalries and prejudices never hurt anyone.

You'll find there's actually a good mix of rogues (and other characters) in the hall, some will befriend you, others will gut your corpse and steal your boots. Generally you'll come across a better weapon in a quest that will over shadow your starter weapon, nothing wrong with wanting/trying to stick with it though.

I don't know if a lot of nerfing needs to happen but it goes back to class creation basics: Why would a player want to play as this class? How is mechanically different so that it can be stratigized around? How is stylistically different that I can't say make a mage and have them be obsessed with fire magic and afraid that their power is too much for them to handle? (Sort of the issue I have with all elemental themed classes). I think you need to focus on a few key ideas which you do have (burning effect, AoE, risk to do damage to party), start from a basic class and adapt it from there.

Hello Robert10ant and welcome to Heroica RPG. A few things to note about your character statistics: - Need to specify a class (Barbarian, Cleric, Knight, Mage, Ranger, Rogue (from looking at your inventory I'm assuming Rogue) - Liquid metal needs to have a weapon type associated with it (see what weapon types are available to Rogues)

As Flipz has discussed, permanent Lucky is overpowered, Damage and Special Damage should be reworked as the class needs some method of allowing enemies to hit them. After that, it's essentially a barbarian that doesn't have to go looking for a weapon with either the burning effect or poisoned effect. Witch is already dealing poisoned effect (burning effect by another name) on every hit (albeit single target), so I can't see a reason for player specifically picking this class or a reason why someone couldn't take an existing class (Chi Monk or other mage based class) and flavor their character to be a pyro. Good perhaps as an NPC class, but not for PC's as it stands.

Depends if you have enough cash to keep upgrading two weapons.

The second case.

"I'd look forward to a bit of a challenge and I'm sure with yourself and Hoke, we'd be a force to reckon with." Skrall reached out to respectively stroke the reptile, "You got a pet I see. I always figured you'd team up with Vipera one of these days. Who else are you thinking of taking along?"

Heroica RPG QM Battle Guide Setting up battles can be one of the most difficult aspects of QMing. Unlike your plot, puzzles, NPC’s, or building sets, battles are often something that you can never be fully prepared for until you are writing them up. With practice, crafting appropriate and enjoyable battles for both your players and yourself is possible though it takes a lot of trial and error and even then you’ll still make mistakes once and a while. This is not meant to serve as the end all of battle planning, this is merely one QM’s thoughts. Also as soon as you talk about how you plan your battles, players will adapt their strategies to compensate, it’s simply the nature of the game, so be aware that some adaptations might need to be made as the player base expands and evolves. Now, moving on to some basics: Some key things to consider from the onset Difficulty of the battle Length of the battle Party stats and synergy Difficulty of the battle: Whether you plan out every aspect of your quest or you have a more improvisational style, figuring out what would be realistic is generally a good starting point. Party going up against a horde of rats? Probably shouldn’t be the end of the world. Party charging the stronghold of a deadly necromancer? The stakes/challenge should be high and the party should feel it. Generally length and difficulty of a battle go hand in hand. The easier the battle, the quicker it should be over, the more challenging the more grueling. There are other combinations. Fast and deadly can be good for boosting excitement and anticipation in the party, but a boss battle that’s over in 2 rounds while maybe riveting but often leaves the players sort of empty (not really there fault, they’ve just been conditioned to believe that challenging = deadly = long and drawn out. There does come a point where a battle maybe so challenging and drawn out that you’ll lose your players interest, it’s best to avoid this. Now onto specifics. Challenge generally is equated with how close the Party comes to dying or how dependent they feel they need to be on consumables. The former is pretty easy; figure out how much damage a PC can take and then divide it by the number of hits you want them to be able to withstand before they’re KO’d. Generally I like to do something like this: Easy Battle: Party member can be taken out in 5-6 hits Medium Battle: Party member can be taken out in 3-4 hits. Hard Battle: Party member can be taken out in 1-2 hits. Now something to keep in mind is that your players are going to prioritize which of your monsters they are going to attack or leave alone and deal with the free hits. This is where specials can come into play, but generally unless all of your monsters have the same stats, the players with the highest SP will take the strongest monster and so on and so forth. You can avoid this trait by adding specials that deter the general strategy, i.e. Bleeding, Poisoned, or Burning effects to encourage the tanks to stay away (since SP is not counted towards these effects) or a Sealed or Blinded effect to deal with Ether classes or physical attackers respectively. One thing to note, if you’re specials are too nasty then players will more than likely take a free hit rather than chance it, especially if the odds are in their favor. To combat this, you either need to include lots of enemies to ensure that more than the tank takes a free hit, or include passive specials that are used on free hits, like SP defying or Row defying, or effects that are dealt on whenever the enemy strikes a party member. For example: Party: Knight: 20 SP >Ranger: 8 SP Rogue: 2 SP Enemy: Bad Guy 1: Level 25, Special Damage: Bleeding Bad Guy 2: Level 20, Special Damage: Steals Gold Bad Guy 3: Level 15, Special Damage: Stuns Bad Guy 3: Level 15, Special Damage: Heals Party In this scenario, while it would seem likely for the Knight to take on the hardest hitting enemy, to avoid the Bleeding effect, the Knight will probably soak up a free hit from the first bad guy until the odds are in the party’s favor and he can easily be remedied should he start bleeding. One thing to consider in terms of difficulty is allowing players builds to benefit them. If a player has immunity to Bleeding and you’re not aiming for a super difficult battle, don’t force him to attack another enemy who doesn’t deal Bleeding because he has to compensate for another of his Party’s weaknesses. Same goes for SP and consumable usage. The best strategy is to look at your battle and predict what your party will do and make your battle such that it has multiple options. For easier battles there should be hundreds of options/strategies for them, for medium battles they should have to think a little, and for difficult ones they should have a limited number of strategies that don’t have consequences. Now all of this is dependent on dice rolls, so one thing to consider is that more often than not, your enemies are only going to do damage or have a negative impact on the party 1/3 of the time and if they’re lucky, even less of a chance so factor this in. Length of the Battle: Battle length (i.e. how many rounds of combat) can be tricky to estimate, partly due to the random nature of battle rolls. In reality, battle length is merely a factor of how many successful hits from your party it will take to destroy your enemies. Many things factor into this, consumables, party classes, party stats, and as always the luck of the roll. Generally I’ll take a look at the damage output of each player and figure out how many HIT’s it would take the most probable assailant of my enemy in a given battle to reduce them to 0 HP multiply that number by 3 and use that as my length estimate. Example Knight: Hit does 20 Damage Bad Guy 1: 60 HP Estimate 6 rounds of battle to beat Bad Guy 1 Of course all of this changes if some of your PC’s finish off some of your enemies and start to double team them, or if they roll so poorly that the odds start going against them. One should also factor into the equation the difficulty of the encounter. If the PC is going to need to spend every other round healing themselves up, then it is going to take two times as long to defeat your enemy. Consumables can play a big part of this equation as well, if a hero becomes hastened, lucky, or encouraged, it will drastically affect the amount of rounds and this is where the reading of your players becomes important. Being able to tell whether or not your heroes are going to use a consumable can be tricky and one should always make sure that one rarely plans a battle that requires consumable usage and that the advantage of using them is not lost. Unfortunately the math isn’t in the QM’s favor when it comes to balancing for consumables usage, generally their usage gives such an advantage to the PC that one needs to change stats a little bit if you think there’s a remote chance they might use them to ensure that they don’t wipe the floor with your enemies and your battle become a cake walk. One obvious counter to this are enemies who either compensate with boosting specials of their own or specials that negate the use of the consumables i.e. weakening, slowing, stealing effects, etc. Party Stats and Synergy: So you’ve set the encounter’s difficulty and length now to get into the nitty gritty of actual party counters. First off, most of the time you want to leave things pretty generic. Build the initial battle as if your heroes didn’t have awesome weapons, consumables, or gear and then adjust from there. This will help avoid either becoming too bogged down in details and overwhelmed or to focused on countering every advantage your PC’s have that it doesn’t make a difference that they have awesome weapons, consumables, or gear. As with difficulty, you need to in some ways figure out how the party is going to approach the fight. Sometimes the party finds loopholes in your plans, this is why it is key to go over the battle at least twice before you post it to make sure you don’t miss anything. One thing to remember, every battle should be winnable (not easy, not even probable, but winnable), however every battle should also be losable. There is a spectrum and straying to either end is generally not a good idea and can start to wear on your players. Now, onto specifics. Class Counters: High SP classes – You have a few options, the easiest is creating an enemy at high enough level that it will still hurt them. Sometimes this is necessary, but remember that the enemy will also probably be tough enough to KO the other party members without high SP in one hit. Alternatively you can add the *Ignores SP* modifier. After a while this gets kind of boring and you can’t give this to every enemy because it negates the advantage that the PC has worked hard to obtain. Other options include effects like Bleeding, Poisoned, and Burned again be careful with over-disregarding your PC’s immunities that they’ve also worked hard to obtain. Free hits can be a big part too after a while they aren’t going to be able to stop everything. High Damage classes – SP on your enemies, healing specials, weakened or afraid effects. Ether Classes and Debuffers – Immunities are a big part and a QM should be careful that they don’t overuse them. Nothing is more discouraging to a player than an *Immune to all effects* it limits a player’s strategy to simply “I attack” until either the player dies or the enemy dies. Things that swap effects, remedy negative effects, or use the Sealing effect or drain ether are good uses. AoE Classes – Passive specials that specifically negate the effects of AoE attacks. Generally an outright immunity isn’t the most enjoyable thing for a player, so try using an immunity that’s dependent on something else in the battle, like a leader staying standing, or an enemy support unit of sorts. Final Thoughts: There are many ways to design battles this is simply the thought process that I utilize when creating them. There’s not necessarily anything right or wrong about it. If you find something that works and your players enjoy go with it. One thing to consider is disconnecting success with all the enemies being defeated. Battles that involve extra elements like a limited number of rounds to achieve victory, protection of an allied PC, destruction of enemy forces in a particular order, and other goals all add nuances and variances to the traditional setup that can make PC’s reconsider their usual strategy and generally lend themselves to a more memorable battle. This isn’t to say that every battle should be like that, but just as quests can benefit from having a good mix of RPing, puzzles, and battles, so too battles can benefit from having a good mix of difficulty, length, and ultimately goals. Finally, battles are simply another means to an end, they play a big part in the advancement of the PC’s but they’re simply another obstacle to move the story of Heroica RPG forward. If they can do so in a way that brings enjoyment to the PC’s then I think our job has been accomplished.

Skrall adds his name behind the pretty elf to the Fields of Glory. "Tensi and Hoke again, here's hoping they aren't butting heads like usual." Skrall heads back up the stairs and joins the two along with the elf and gentleman that he can't seem to remember ever having much interactions with. "So looks like you both are going for a run in the fields? Anything in particular you're after?"

Had some free time creep up on me. Quest 123: Characters: I'm a sucker for reoccurring characters, as Bio_fan pointed out they definitely add to the believability of the world. Reoccurring characters are great, but consistent reoccurring characters are awesome and while Skrall hasn't had a ton of interactions with all of your characters it was good to see them organically growing from your past quests. It was good to actually interact with them as well, your RP only phases are one of my favorite parts of your quests as it really gives the heroes opportunity to engage with the world and form relationships. You did a good job of adding more information about your NPC's without it seeming like unnecessary facts for the benefit of the reader and not for the characters. Story: Basic. As it should be for beginner quests, sometimes your plots get pretty convoluted or heavy handed and if you throw brand new characters into those situations it can be difficult to get them to truly care about what's going on. Having established the party's relationships with Elba, Uor's, Chauncey, and Shawe, it is so much easier to create tension with storylines concerning these characters because the party now has a history with them. Too often QM's try to get a party to care about NPC's in super epic dire straits just moments after they've been introduced. Building up to those types of high stakes allows a party to go from "Oh we should help these people because we're the good guys, or the pay is good" to "Oh we should help these people because we know them". The story itself was perfectly paced in my opinion, you showcased a good portion of Eubric without making it feel like a whirlwind tour. The conflict of the story was believable and flowed really well without ever feeling heavily railroaded. You excellently portrayed NPC's and organizations/world-powers without feeling the need to vomit a huge chunk of unnecessary back-story and dialog on the party. They were told all they needed to know for what concerned the situation and had the opportunity to dig deeper if they wanted to, not if the QM wanted them to. Only one question, what was Chauncey's gift? Puzzles: Not too complex and fitting for the story, so good job, maybe one more would have made the puzzle/battle ratio perfect in my opinion. Battles/Loot: Tough but fair, we had some hard rolls, but I don't think things were impossible. I'm grateful we got reimbursed for our consumables as it did seem we drained through them pretty quickly in order to stay alive. You did a good job of introducing a lot of the basic mechanics without making things too tricky or simplistic; Free Hits, Poison, Stunned, etc. Loot wise you were more than fair and I'm always a fan of customized yet not overpowered loot and the presents at the end embody that. Fellow Players: Bio_fan (Karl): Karl is a good mix of action and reflection. We know some of what he's thinking and feeling, but not every post is filled with his interior dialog. I think you're going in the right direction and I'd encourage you to keep on playing up the impact of his childhood in the hovel on his perspective of the world. One encouragement, let your past experience in quests and interactions with heroes have an impact on your character, make sure he isn't too driven by his past or too driven by a predetermined future you have planned out for him. From a mechanics perspective, you did a pretty good job as party leader, you're still learning the mechanics and how each class can best be utilized (trust me it takes a while) but you definitely showed improvement from the first battle to the last. Mencot (Keliim): Keliim is fun to read and again he has a unique perspective on the world and the right blend between back-story and the impact of his current situation. He was enjoyable to bounce some dialog off of and I'm sure Boris wouldn't have any issues questing with him again. You're more familiar with the game itself since you've been observing it for a while now and it definitely shows. Keliim felt pretty natural, like he had been on plenty of quests before and it helped to characterize him as an experienced fighter. Overall, a good job. That's about it. It was fun questing with all of you and I'm glad this was my second secondary characters first quest and feel confident in continuing on with him.

Unless there's a bunch of low level heroes, I'd suggest maybe going on one more quest first. There's a couple of mechanics that weren't touched on in your first quest and it'd be good to experience another QM's style. Otherwise plan something simple, build up to the epic size quests. An even better solution would be to look for a cohost (preferably someone who has a little more QM experience), it helps to be able to run stuff by someone mid quest as well as in the planning stages. Sandy, Zepher, CallMePie, Brickdoctor, JimB, Scubacarrot, Endgame, and Flipz are great resources, use them.

Any use for a Hunter?

Traveling all day, so I'll say more later, but this was one of your better quests, Zepher, so great job!

Concerning quality of builds: This comes from one of my favorite quests (quest 13) and demonstrates how you don't need a gigantic complex set to convey a scene.

I'm working on something, will post it here when finished.

Boris smiled and chuckled, "'Your storehouses will thus be overflowing with abundance and your wine presses besot with a flood of the juice of grapes.'" Boris clinked his glass to Shawe's "I doubt it will be missed. Reminds me of one of the priests who had an issue with the temple wines." The night wore on and though the alcohol did little to stimulate the vampire, the warm company was at least of some comfort and amusement. Guffington truly was a gracious host and it was early in the morning before the cleric bid the company a good night and left with reward in hand for his quarters. OoC: I think that's everybody. Thanks Zepher, a jolly good quest!

I don't believe it's a benefit, I believe it's a check to keep it from being overpowered. 10 SP is pretty high for a single piece.

I fail to see why one should be exclusive of the other. Jimb is a prime example of a player who has contributed both as a QM and a player, participating and QMing at the same time is difficult to pull off so expecting one person to devote their time to one or the other I feel would be too limiting. I believe folks don't QM because they feel they either need a long drawn out story (nothing wrong with dungeon crawls) or they don't believe their collection is large enough for good sets (all it takes is one look at Rumble Strike's quests to see how good a low budget quest can look).

Boris strolled inside with the rest of the group. Obtaining a drink, the vampire settled himself next to Shawe. "Well master Shawe, I must complement you on your selection of wines, tis the first drink I've had that doesn't taste like sand and ashes."