Waterbrick Down

You're right in that the goal is to encourage folks to get their companions back up. We can do that either by penalizing (if you don't get them back up they'll die) or incentivizing (get them back up and there's a bonus). Finding the right balance between these two is always the trick. I do think non-healer should be able to help their downed companions, but part of me feels that may disincentive healers too much as they already have to choose between spending a turn dealing damage or spending a turn healing. Coming from D&D as well, I like the death saves, but I don't like how it can be 6 rounds before something is determined. My current thoughts are: If a character is Unstable at the beginning of a round they roll a Stability Check (i.e. a d6) on their turn: on a 1-3 they remain Unstable, on a 4-5 they are Stabilized, and on a 6 they are revived with 1 Vitality and are Lucky for their next turn. As a Standard Action a character may attempt a Medicine Proficiency Check (DC 1, 3) to either Stabilize an Unstable hero or revive them with 1 Vitality and make them Lucky for their next turn. At the end of battle Stabilized heroes are revived with 1 Vitality, Unstabilized heroes may make one more Stability Check or alternatively an Ally may make a Medicine Proficiency Check, on a failure the hero dies.

"Take your pick of targets, just be careful with the live rounds."

"My mission companions were quite resourceful. I did wonder who had cooled down the training room, it's quite pleasant. A key to healing is recognizing the hurt, the distractions and allowing it to be washed away by the ebb and flow of life. Channeling this allows us to bring restoration and peace to those around us and ourselves."

Yes, combat is definitely going to take some getting used to. I don't think a lot of players had a sense for how much their combat proficiency stat (be it a weapon or magic) would translate to effectiveness. Knowing what we've seen so far, I'd definitely recommend that all new players put at least 2 into either a magic proficiency, weapon proficiency, or an Attribute where they can reliably use the Rally or Defend action. Otherwise combat is going to be rough, especially when ties go to the defender in terms of damage. I echo every bit of what you've said. Going back to Heroica with a lot of other RPG's now under my belt, I'm trying to figure out how the story telling is going to be shaped as the heroes remain the same, but we run with multiple DM's. I've got to imagine it'll look closer to the early history of D&D when you just took your same character from DM table to DM table. More of a West Marches style, but dependent on the where the DM wants to run as opposed to the players. I think as time goes on and character develop we may see more *custom* type quests, but those usually take a while to develop a good rapport between players and mission masters. Right now, I'm trying to look at what are the cool areas of the setting and try and hope the folks who sign up for the quest will think it is as cool as I do. That was sort of the intention of launching with more established lore than the Heroica 1.0. By allowing players to insert their characters into the pre-baked setting, it would give them ideas on what sort of quests to look out for. Kind of like Felix and Ætherspace.

Plus, if you don't like it, you can always retool.

"By all means, feel free." Valesia wanders into the training room and spots Polaris. "You're back, Sugar! Glad to see you in one piece after our splitting off for missions. I was just looking to do some communing, if you wanted to join me. Thorvald mentioned something about you wantin' to know more about healing. I find there's nothing outside of cookin' that can set one's spirits right like a good communing." That being said the Cladrasith took a seat near a window looking to the courtyard, closed her eyes, and began to hum a low soothing melody as she focused upon her home world and the nature around it. Nature 2 → Nature 3 (-3 Character Points)

Yes and no. As a Mission Master, it's part of my job to present challenges for the Party to overcome. Sometimes those challenges slide more towards the deadly side of things. Having been working on the rules set for quite a while now, I have a pretty good sense for balance and how to let the enemies effectively use the combat system (where as in Heroica 1.0 enemies were reactionary). So in a way, I am more playing against you than MM ever did in Heroica 1.0, so it can become a game of who knows how to use the rules more effectively with their given resources. Thus when I created the combats, I may have balanced them so that they almost had the same point spread as you, but I didn't account for me knowing the rules and tactics better, which made the fights much more difficult. To compensate, toward the end of the last battle I had to intentionally not take advantage of some of the rules (Opportunistic attacks for instance) otherwise it would have been a slaughter. So I suppose, I was not intending to try and kill the characters, it sort of happened unintentionally by assuming everyone would play as optimally as possible. Your takes are dead on. This was an intro quest, so not a whole lot of time to do deep delves into each NPC's character, but enough to hopefully keep people interested and wanting to come back. Makes sense, and I hope the bonus I did give was ok. I was reticent to set a precedent where you could just make a check outside of a quest and permanently bump your stats, but I still wanted to reward you for interacting with the world. The crystal flowers were manifestations of thought, you could maybe have made something like an essence out of them. Glad it worked out. I love variant builds, so I'm always interested to see what other interpretations of a character look like. This makes sense and I get it. The balance is making sure to easily transition to role playing with the other characters when they do interact with Polaris so that it doesn't become an instance of no one wants to role play with Polaris because she's too busy interacting with herself. Not saying you've strayed that far yet, just something to be aware of.

"Can't say I have, I can let know though." "The usual, Bub?" LAST Call Sign Ups for Mission #5: Slay RideAysu (Peppermint M)Ronin (Yzalirk) Decker DaCabe (Endgame) Enson (Duvors) Polaris (samurai-turtle) Varen (KOTZ)

Alrighty, Mission #2. Firstly, thanks to @Khorne @samurai-turtle @KotZ for joining onto my first completed quest in Heroica: GATS! It's a great feeling to have seen how far we as a community have come since the inception of the idea. As a party you guys worked well together and really were a cohesive group even while getting your feet wet with the new mechanics. Thanks for your patience as I learned them as well and figured out how to run a mission smoothly, typos and copy errors included. The story itself was quite straightforward without a whole lot of branching paths: Talk with White Knight → Figure out a way inside the Warehouse → Locate Lars → Get out alive The details around the setup of the situation were a little more complex however and certainly evolved as the mission wore on resulting in the ending we had. I hadn't intended to expand on Thudaal lore in this mission, but I'm certainly glad we did. Ætherspace as a concept was a bit tricky to carve out and I'll be interested to see how other MM interpret it. For me it's a mix between Tron's cyberspace and the D&D Ethereal plane and hopefully that came through in the photos and descriptions. The main thrust behind most of the mission was really laying groundwork for pieces of the world: White Knight, Lupin, Quarm, Thudaal, Ætherdiving. For the most part, I think I got everything out there that I had intended and I don't think you all missed much or didn't interact with. Your interactions with the NPC's was fitting and I appreciated that you all really interacted with them just as much as you did each other and helped flesh out their characters. White Knight is a bit of an amalgamation of the Town Watch and the Paladin Order from Heroica 1.0 and I really hope to bring some of the NPC's back in the future, not to mention the Collective. Gameplay wise, you guys faired well on the non-combat side of things. You really learned how to interact with the Proficiency Check mechanics and use your particular skills to get things done (Felix Survival/Coding, Polaris Nature/Medicine, Varen Persuasion) which was cool to see. You pieced most of the puzzle together as to what was going on and you all solved the literal puzzle expertly, so well done. As for combat... The new battle mechanics certainly take some getting used to and they afford a lot more tactical options compared to Heroica 1.0, where all you had to worry about as a weapon user was what enemy to target. I also realized after the first battle that I had set the Skill of the enemies too high and it resulted in them being too difficult to kill. That battle should have only been half the number of rounds it took and I didn't do a good job of realizing that rolling 1 dices +1 weapon hit was very infrequently do damage against something rolling 3 dice. And that didn't even account for if someone was shooting with a disadvantage (i.e. being too close or too far away from the target). All in all it meant that battle dragged and I'm sorry your first combat experience with the new system was like that. The second combat I feel went much better. Yes it was more challenging, but you all started working more as a team and figuring out ways to use the system to your advantage, whether it was by stunning the creature or defending/rallying each other to help do lots of damage/protect from damage. The moment you realized that if you took care of the creature that it would help Lars, I think shifted the battle into potentially hopeless to achievable. It still was close, but I think you had enough tools at your disposal to get the job done. @KotZ sorry you spent so much time unconscious, the Stabilization mechanic needs to be fixed to provide more hope and I think we need a way to incentivize Heroes not only stabilizing their fellow companions but actually healing them and getting them back in the battle. In the end, I learned a lot about what works with the new system and what doesn't so hopefully my next mission you all are on will feel a little less overwhelming in the battles department. Varen (KOTZ) A lawyer doing mercenary work I think fits the setting very well. I like Varen's reminiscing of his legal practice and party days, but maybe it's not super clear why he ever got out of it. It certainly comes up in his interactions and it fits his stat choice super well, maybe its something we'll see explored later. I'll echo Khorne's comments about the contrast between his and Felix's justice/law approach was really cool to see. While you did spend a fair amount of time knocked out in the combat, I think in those instances where you were up, your long range capabilities definitely assisted your companions. The trick would be in the future to keep your space from the enemy (granted that depends on the grid layout) and you'll go down less often. All in all, it was great to have you along on the quest and you brought a lot to it. Polaris (samurai-turtle) You embody the combat veteran pretty well I think and it definitely came out in this mission. I'm still not sure what to make of MILES as I think companions can be difficult to pull off well, but I'm still interested to see where it goes. You definitely propped up the team's combat side of things acting as the damage sponge and it became obvious that in order for the enemies to win they'd have to deal with Polaris. You were really good at coming up with creative solutions to problems and that helped me as a Mission Master want to provide things that could be interacted with. The fact that Polaris kept on reading the holocubes took me a little by surprise, but I'm glad she did and was cool to see her medic background reinforce this aspect of her personality traits. The debrief at the end I think also helped reveal more about Polaris's perspective on life and the law which I think will be neat to see explored as she develops. Great job! Felix (Khorne) I really like what you're doing with Felix, Khorne. I know it can be difficult to get out of the habits created for one character, but you are doing a really good job with differentiating Felix as his own character. The noir detective thing comes through really well and doesn't feel forced. As mission leader, you expertly handled not only the new mechanics but helping the group strategize as well. As a MM it can be tricky to figure out how much advice to give your players in a certain situation without it spoiling the fun. Thankfully you stepped up and I didn't have to worry about it too much. Yes combat was rough, but your group definitely improved over the length of the quest and so did Felix. His interactions with Lars and Molly made me smile and I like that while his background impacts his actions, it doesn't control them. I think you've got that balance down. I'm glad the quest was such a good fit for his character and I look forward to having Felix along for future missions. Thanks again to everyone who participated and read along, hopefully this was a good start to many more missions to come. Yes, with the threat of character death, I think healing is going to become more critical to groups. Thankfully characters can be retooled, so if medicine or a spell is useful for a given mission its fairly straightforward to set your character up to do well. Glad you all kept stabilizing KOTZ. While the Stability mechanics need to be reworked, I was glad we didn't have to make a rules exception for this game because of an unfair character death.

MM Note:

You've got a few options, increase vitality to take more hits, invest in Skill to avoid hits in the first place, invest in Strength for armor to absorb the hits.

MM Note: The intention was for everyone to get one of each consumable, hence why they were added into your stats already.

You're welcome, don't forget you're also allowed to swap all of your points around if your particular build isn't working for you.

Abam remains unconscious. Yelana Sleight of Hand Proficiency Check (DC 1,3) - (2, 2, 6, +1) 2 Successes Yelana opens the case with some difficulty, the lock being even more scratched and dented in the process.

"That's quite the list there, but certainly, let me gather the necessary training materials."

Yep, that is just fine.

"There is not sir. Only access is the side doors in dining, the engine, and baggage." MM Note: The result is the same. Checks are to represent the overall attempt at performing an action whether you try it once or a dozen times. They're not always a one to one correlation. The Dwarf is still sleeping.

I like the idea of keeping track of it in Registration topic as that'll help avoid cluttering up stats in quest and this notation idea.

Yelana Stealth Proficiency Check (DC 1) - (2, 6, 1, +1) 2 Successes Yelana Perception Proficiency Check (DC 1) - (2, 4, 1, 2, 1, +1) 2 Successes Yelana replaces the briefcase, convinced she hasn't been spotted.

MM Note: Ah. No one seems to note Yelana's entrance back into the economy car.

Yelana Perception Check (DC 3) - (4, 6, 1, 3, 3, +1) 3 Successes The Dwarf remains asleep, no anomalous sources of light or sound out in the open presented themselves, though Yelana reasons it may be difficult to detect something of that nature if it is in a storage container.

Yelana Perception Check (DC 3) - (1, 4, 6, 4, 1, +1) 4 Successes Yelana does not discover any anomalous sources of light or sound.

Probably a better topic of discussion here. Do folks have any thoughts on if/how Proficiencies that are gained as a reward should be handled? Should they be allowed to trade in if a character retrains their stats or should they be fixed for as long as the character exists? The former would mean that a character that already has a high proficiency is getting more character points they can cash in on for +1 Proficiency bump. I.e. Felix Coding bumps from 1 to 2, which is the equivalent of 2 character points, where as Polaris Coding bumps from 0 to 1, which is the equivalent of 1 character point. The latter interpretation would mean that we need a way to designate stats that are fixed and stats that can be retooled.

MM Note: Yes, taking into account the retroactive edit to the Baggage Car door being locked.

"Good timing, that one's coming down pretty soon.. and this one's going up." A new mission has been posted! Mission #6: We Now Interrupt This BroadcastMission Master: EndgameAssignment: "Testing, testing, is this thing on? Right. A concerning matter has come to our attention. There is a strange broadcast emanating from the wastelands that has us worried. It's interfering with signals from transport ships, hijacking the occasional display, and has... generally ominous contents, to be frank. I can say no more here. I require specialists to investigate." -Glenn Harmondron, Communications Expert on CorvanisParty Requirements: "Two to four agents who can exercise some discretion would be ideal."Reward: "80 credits for each agent who can reveal the nature of this signal." Signups close Sept. 10