- Location
- Castle
[x] Azel
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
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- Tags
- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
- Location
- United Kingdom
[X] Azel
- Location
- Germany
This whole thing sadly fits the trend already set by the Inquisition. They are allowed to be presumed useful off-screen and occasionally get to do something against some mooks at the edge of the narrative, but any meaningful opposition and they get clowned on until some Fighter 3 Knight can save the day or something.
MagnificentMind
To Live is to Suffer
[X] Azel
- Pronouns
- He
Our spy network is still young. Give it a few more years and they'll hopefully be more effective.
Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
Unfortunately considering the various threats and opponents we're going up against we're less than inclined to give them a few years in the hopes they'll be more effective.
In fact the reason we throw so much money at them is because we don't have time to wait for them to hopefully become more effective.
Pictured Viserys:
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
This problem isn't really just limited to the off-screen characters, intrigue actions in general don't even deliver dribs and drabs of useful information.
Usually it's a big fat nothing sandwich, and the ending report is "they're doing some weird thing at X... what are they doing it with? Why? Who? UHHHHHH..."
We usually only figure out one of those things before the rest of the intelligence becomes non-actionable, unless we brute force our way to finding out with high level spell casting and a couple combat encounters.
That's the thing which is annoying @Azel. In intrigue, we shouldn't only get something useful done after the stabby dudes we're paying are in the picture. That's just... clumsy.
- Location
- Germany
The Inquisition exists for 2 years IC by now and 3 years OOC, while we absorbed plenty of institutional knowledge from other spy agencies and explicitly hired experts from various sources.
In all this time, they didn't manage a single NPC Inquisitor that reached lvl 6 on his own or even shown some basic competence when we are not micromanaging them.
Instead, every time we talk about intrigue, the thread laser-focuses on sending Garin, because he is the one and only member of the entire institution who actually achieves something now and then. I'm pretty much convinced by now that we should demote him and instead set somebody else to administrate the agency, since no one seems to even grasp that he has a leadership function due to how utterly useless everything below him is. So we end up with the head of one huge government agency constantly being kept busy by doing field-work and nobody actually leading anything.
As @egoo already pointed out, intrigue is pretty much dead for this quest anyway. The last faction that we had any chance at infiltrating is currently on the way to leave the stage.Unfortunately considering the various threats and opponents we're going up against we're less than inclined to give them a few years in the hopes they'll be more effective.
In fact the reason we throw so much money at them is because we don't have time to wait for them to hopefully become more effective.
Pictured Viserys:
Who else would we infiltrate? The City of Brass? We can barely keep some yokels from Yi-Ti from opening Gates in the middle of SDs bazaar, so probably not.
Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
I am still salty about that one by the by. If they hadn't managed to shit the bed even further I'd have sent a very sternly worded letter back with them.
As it is, it's only thanks to Pol Ning's quick thinking I didn't pull an East of West and send them all back in a box. One, box.
- Location
- Germany
The problem is that they are not PC's. They are not allowed to be useful in anything that matters.
Heck, this is the first real on-screen use of the Praetori and what do we get?
DP: "The Praetori are really awesome, but now they are getting slaughtered by the Lannister forces."
Me: "Ok, that sucks. But hey! If we neutralize the mages and carefully maneuver around the debuffed golems, there is a small chance that they could actually win this!"
DP: "Oh? Ok. Here is that encounter then, but the mages are invulnerable and I doubled the golems, who can now be re-buffed at will."
Me: "..."
DP: "You must kill all the golems first before you can touch the mages."
Yeah.... Really sold on all the effort and ressources, both IC and OOC, that went into this.
Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
Well on the bright side the Inquisition seems to be somewhat on the ball for internal security if nothing else, Yi-Ti's little gate bullshit aside.
I don't recall us having any major infiltration issues from local players on Planetos and the only ones who really managed to rock the boat are the extra planar empires who've been at this game longer than the invention of pants.
I can recall the Mirror subversion attempt, Tiamat's hail mary assassin, both of which were thwarted, and that's about it.
I don't recall us having any major infiltration issues from local players on Planetos and the only ones who really managed to rock the boat are the extra planar empires who've been at this game longer than the invention of pants.
I can recall the Mirror subversion attempt, Tiamat's hail mary assassin, both of which were thwarted, and that's about it.
- Location
- Germany
We simply had no infiltration attempts. So far, the Inquisition never managed to catch any foreign spies. Ever. They sometimes get to play at being useful by busting some wannabe cult or a few smugglers who solely exist to be stomped on, but that's it.
They never caught a Lannister spy. Thy never caught a maester spy. They definitely never caught an actual Devil or Demon infiltration. Either there was nothing, or there was something and it went entirely undetected.
The Mirror incident? That was Viserys directly. They did an attack of opportunity during our demon summoning and due to the insistent poking by players and Viserys, we managed to uncover that they had successfully infiltrated the House of Mirrors, built a cult hideout and prepared to screw with the Mirror Vision network. None of this was detected by the Inquisition. They were entirely useless in detecting, let alone fighting this!
This has been a constant "feature" for years now and I'm tired of chalking this up to "but they are still a young organization". They get shat on because they ae NPCs and thus can not be allowed to affect anything that matters. That's what it boils down to. The performance of the Praetori right now fits right into the same mold.
- Pronouns
- He
You're being a bit harsh to DP, but I see your point. This is a really tough fight for anyone not at least Mythic Rank. But again this is war, and the Space Marines the Praetorians are based on don't win all the time.
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- Location
- Germany
"They are not PCs, so it's alright that they get roflstomped."
Thank you for proving my point.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Azel pointed out in an earlier post that he viewed the initial set-up as a "difficult, but winnable fight".
When we actually get to see what they're going up against, it's like, WHY even write that update?
What purpose does it serve, other than to inform the players that they have once again wasted significant time and OOC energy on making something that can fill some narrative space which isn't a player character, only to be informed "actually, the player characters have to solve everything once again".
Even outside, what we see is the Lannisters do exactly what we are trying to do in the throne room, using tools and preparation to go up against a superior force. And only failing due to PC intervention. Because they have no PCs on the field to counter our PCs.
It makes it like only PCs matter. Which is fine for pretty much ANY other D&D campaign, to be honest, but it does feel like the scope of the quest outgrew that the minute we went into kingdom building.
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
The problem is the complete lack of intel (the golems, the kind of high level items being bought or the trade necessary to acquire the reagents) the apparently OP spell that came out of the left field (they either have a lot more high level spellcasters hidding in a pokeball than we thought they had, or somehow they managed to stumble on a one-way semi-permeable resilient sphere since that's not how force effects work) and to add insult to the injury all of this caught us completely off guard because we weren't able to catch a wiff of the lannisters readiness, either in terms of equipment, tactics, or type of manpower behind it all, despite having defectors for a while that could give us some insight on what they had, or at least how they could have hidden all this info.
No he really is not. Some fair points have been brought up about how I structured the encounter and more importantly how my seat of your pants GM-ing is making the effort that goes into information gathering not seem to do anything. This is an empire builder, but I have a tendency to let the empire parts suffer as I focus on making a cool scene in the moment.
That was not a balanced fight for the Prearori. It would be like if I gave Valaena a CR 10 encounter on her first time out and she had to be saved by companions. People invested in her story would be rightfully annoyed by the fact... and the institutions of Empire are a far more important part of the narrative than any single PC.
I messed up, I'll take the criticism on board and I'll do better in the future.
- Pronouns
- He
Hey, look on the bright side, this encounter is gonna give the Praetorians a level up each.
Those who survive that is.
Those who survive that is.
- Location
- The Netherlands
basically everyone who has is voting to pull them out becouse they can't deal with it. no level ups for retreating
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
I mean, @DragonParadox follows multiple quests with empire and kingdom management aspects. It's not like he doesn't know how this usually goes. OTOH, those quests usually resolve their actions with far less granularity involved. 
- Pronouns
- He
Ah right, thanks for the reminder.
- Location
- United States
I'm just baffled that the Lannisters of all factions are offering up any sort of challenge to us.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I don't really see them retreating from ten enhanced CR 15 Golems and a half dozen prepared mages as being a bad thing, or getting clowned on. Sure, it would be cool if they could win here, but not all situations work in our favor. They've done well for themselves against other threats, after all.
If it was just the Golems, this would be a whole different encounter.