A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

[Crake]

Actually... I think I have a viable solution that would not involve any changes on @DragonParadox's part.

Any other DM would have said it a long time ago, anyway.

Curb our expectations.

 

[MTB]

Try more non-combat encounters (that is, physical combat). You (and Azel) revamped the social combat system - how about situations where brute force is not an adaequate solution? Negotiations, planning sessions with or without backstab potential, ... ?

 

[Duesal]

True as far as it goes. I could point out the Cornugon was the effect of a wild nat 100 for summoning an it would not have stuck around if it killed you but that does not really address the core of the issue. This is something that could have been solved a year ago by making this EL6 (epic level 6) thus no normal character could go over level 5. I considered something like that, having the magic slowly unlock over the years to prevent you from becoming over-leveled and over-powerful but much too late.

So where do we go from here? Short of a quest re-boot I just have to keep playing catch up integrating magic into the setting without being so rushed that you guys call it up as as forced. I like to think I have been getting on top of it since the armor quest and its unfortunate encounters... but apparently my most recent attempt at making things work together has still fallen short.

Click to shrink...

I think just allowing us some successes here and there without having to face CR-appropriate challenges every time would go a long way. I mean sure, it wouldn't be challenging, but by this point we're strong enough that some things just shouldn't be challenging.

It's an odd case of needing balance by backing off and not trying to balance with CR-appropriate encounters all the time. Sometimes we just want a proper curbstomp. This is along the same vein as people wanting Viserys to really shine in battle, then being foiled in their wishes when Viserys dumps on himself if he's not 100% successful. There's got to be some unambiguous triumph here and there that people just feel good about, that has a tangible benefit, and that isn't tainted by something getting away or something going wrong.

I think allowing us at least a chance at a victory like that would go a long way. For example, remember how happy we were when we crushed Stannis' fleet? Even when you told us we couldn't take all the ships, we were still thrilled because it was the most powerful we'd felt in a long time.

 

[MTB]

Curb our expectations.

Click to shrink...

Which ones? The "X4 is a go" or the "let's have a dungeon crawl"?

 

[Sqweaktoy]

Curb our expectations.

Click to shrink...

That's fair, but I'd hope DP knows we don't expect him to be perfect all the time. I'd assume most of us think he's doing an amazing job given all the challenges he's facing. This issue isn't even really a failing on his part, its the fault line between the crossover finally causing an immersion-quake

 

[egoo]

I guess that many people (me included) are just plain tired of having to race against the clock all the time, never facing an encounter that would be 'easy' for us, and always expecting something worse on a horizon, in any situation at any place/time, (case in point - a village during armor-quest) while at the same time having some seriously sod-breaking issues on social side.

In my opinion, it has very little to do with settings co-integration and is about gameplay balance VS storytelling.
So, i'm with Chulupey's idea on this one, as dnd game-balance starts to cause one salt-caveat after another.

But, I'd like to try and be the one to turn away from salt-tsunami first, so, a question on a completely unrelated matter.
@DragonParadox
How soon we are for a new batch of mages from Scholarum finishing their education and when will we get to see new tribes of tritons?

 

[Crake]

A little of column A, a little of column B.

 

[DragonParadox]

@DragonParadox I think that you're thinking we need appropriate challenges to keep us engaged no matter where we go, while I think that on the contrary, we are too challanged. Sure, we are powerful on paper, but it has gotten to the point where we literally can't leave SD without ramming head first into some CR appropriate encounter (you've basically admitted to this a few minutes ago), which breaks immersion hard. It has gotten to the point where SD is this island of sanity and beyond it is a sea of monsters all too willing to drag us down to a blender and time sink us if we even set a foot away from it, even if all we want is to talk with Noble X.

Another point to bear in mind is that we are following DnD mechanichs (CR appropriate encounters) but DnD was not build for Westeros. If this were a normal tabletop rpg then we'd murderhobo the threat and move on... but we're not in a normal setting. A CR 15 encounter means weeks of work and thousends of gold to deal with the fallout of said encounter. In dnd the adventurers murder and loot the devil, in ASOIAF we have to root out summoners, deal with the city's overlord, diplomance him, deal with prestige fallout, hand out magic items, etc etc etc. The setting simply isn't built for CR appropriate adventurer attuned encounter tables of the high level, and I feel that all of us as a thread are going to have to find a way to fix that because the problem is getting worse with each level up, and soon we'll be reduced to one fetch quest a month followed by 3 months of fallout handling (justifiably, since you can't just ignore the fluff of a CR 20 threat) in some sort of recursive fibonacci pattern of timesinks.

Click to shrink...

I already changed the tales to have less random supernatural encounters, however in the case of Renly you were going into a situation that was both political and supernatural.

Actually... I think I have a viable solution that would not involve any changes on @DragonParadox's part.

Any other DM would have said it a long time ago, anyway.

Curb our expectations.

Click to shrink...

That is not solution, but me admitting I can't fix things and throwing my hands in the air and blaming the players. Not a path I want to go in.

As long as you guys want to read this I'll do my best to make it engaging and that means trying to fix things like this.

 

[Azel]

Actually... I think I have a viable solution that would not involve any changes on @DragonParadox's part.

Any other DM would have said it a long time ago, anyway.

Curb our expectations.

Click to shrink...

Thing is, I'm not expecting us to just roll over Tyrosh and have it running smoothly in a week again. See my rather extensive plans for both conquest and rebuilding.
But none of that is impacted by the amount of Viserys Spellslots or how high Lyas saves are.

I'm actually expecting great challenges from the path we have taken, but they have no CR rating, which make them inherently more intriguing and meaningful for me. Unless the enemy has a hard counter, we can just turtle it or layer save-or-sucks on it until a kitten can kill it. See the Avatar of Tiamat loosing half its effective CR in a single round.

We've won the D&D part. No ifs or buts. If we haven't won it, then we should kiss a few major cities goodbye, since everything that can still threaten us will flatten a few on its way in.
There are still many challenges available in the world, but they are not defined by HD and BAB.

 

[Tomcost]

We tried to diplomance the Lich into accepting oblivion, which failed suddenly, despite it sounding as if this was a valid way to solve the quest.
We talked to Manderly and got the stink eye the whole time, especially after accepting his murder request.
We talked at length with Uthero, the IB and the Sealord, which was nice, even though I have the feeling our last agreement with the Sealord will be a total trainwreck by the power of Murphys Law.
We tried to talk to Fenly, but Devil Interrupt.
We talked to Malarys, though that was hardly able to solve the Tiamat issue.
We talked to Aurane, but that is something I would have gladly solved as a combat encounter.

Click to shrink...

Oh, but we didn't take the Diplomacy option. Most of those things just popped up and we decided to talk first, while going murderhobo on other things. Notice how we didn't take the option to diplomance anything while planning the turn. It just happened.

The Lich was a random encounter for going into the Gilded Quarter in Lys.
Manderly was a deviation from our plans because we decided to fight devils up north.
I'll concede the Fenly point.
Malarys was as random as before, because we tried to loot Essaria again and we were lucky to find him near the monkeys and decide not to kill him beforehand.
And, ironically, Aurane is the biggest example of what we can do without combat, as frustrating as that was.

Also Doran, Dorne was nice without combat.

 

[tarrangar]

I already changed the tales to have less random supernatural encounters, however in the case of Renly you were going into a situation that was both political and supernatural.



That is not solution, but me admitting I can't fix things and throwing my hands in the air and blaming the players. Not a path I want to go in.

As long as you guys want to read this I'll do my best to make it engaging and that means trying to fix things like this.

Click to shrink...

And we are planning to keep reading this for a long time, I want this quest to get to at least 10000 pages before it ends.

 

[DragonParadox]

Good night guys. I'll get back to you in the morning, hopefully with some kind of more far-reaching patch for these issues.

 

[Crake]

I think the core of this latest salt avalanche (which I'm not too hard done over) is basically...

Not everything has to result in conventional D&D rewards. We're not playing a conventional game of D&D. As has been pointed out, we are not able to just fight the monster, loot the monster, and then move on to the next setpiece adventure. We have to remain behind to deal with the fallout, because we are playing someone who has responsibilities beyond being an adventurer.

Every time that a nominally non-dungeon diving, monster slaying escapade gets planned--then interrupted by the monsters coming to us, we can't just brush it off and go back to what we were doing before. We have to cater to the people caught in the crossfire or risk shooting ourselves in the foot.

That's how immersed you've managed to make people, for one thing, which is an achievement. But now that you've gotten us firmly into the mindset of a King, it's time to think about how to handle the issue of pacing for someone who is gathering power to rule, not ruling in order to gather power.

 

[Azel]

Oh, but we didn't take the Diplomacy option. Most of those things just popped up and we decided to talk first, while going murderhobo on other things. Notice how we didn't take the option to diplomance anything while planning the turn. It just happened.

The Lich was a random encounter for going into the Gilded Quarter in Lys.
Manderly was a deviation from our plans because we decided to fight devils up north.
I'll concede the Fenly point.
Malarys was as random as before, because we tried to loot Essaria again and we were lucky to find him near the monkeys and decide not to kill him beforehand.
And, ironically, Aurane is the biggest example of what we can do without combat, as frustrating as that was.

Also Doran, Dorne was nice without combat.

Click to shrink...

I haven't seen any diplomancy options on the turn vote available, except for Fenly and Illyrio.

And I've fought very hard for both of those.

 

[bigbow]

True as far as it goes. I could point out the Cornugon was the effect of a wild nat 100 for summoning an it would not have stuck around if it killed you but that does not really address the core of the issue. This is something that could have been solved a year ago by making this EL6 (epic level 6) thus no normal character could go over level 5. I considered something like that, having the magic slowly unlock over the years to prevent you from becoming over-leveled and over-powerful but much too late.

So where do we go from here? Short of a quest re-boot I just have to keep playing catch up integrating magic into the setting without being so rushed that you guys call it up as as forced. I like to think I have been getting on top of it since the armor quest and its unfortunate encounters... but apparently my most recent attempt at making things work together has still fallen short.

Click to shrink...

To address your latest post, and I don't know how much the thread will agree with me... I propose ditching the CR appropriate encounters...

BADABOMMMM -screams of agony sound in the distance-

Just apply common sense (and hidden shenanigans) to build the encounters. No more super threats attacking us because of CR, just set the world up as it is and let the pieces fall as it were. More Morrowind, less Oblivion. If that leads to us conquering Westeros three years ahead of schedule? Then so be it, I assure you we won't run out of stuff to do within the next three years of real life. Diplomancing nobles, setting the multiple institutions necessary for our vision to flourish... if we don't have anything to do then the thread will find something quickly, even if it means launching a Dragon space program and colonizing the moon, complete with fighting lunar devils . Of course, this would run both ways, if Varys done goof and lights up a super sacrifice with KL's entire population and summons a dozen Balors... then that's what happened, because of his character, motivations and shitty dice rolls, and we will have to deal with the consequences, but those consequences will feel real, or rather organic, not because a cosmic encounter table is dictating our adventures, triumphs and misfortunes.

 

[dpara]

Are we seeing: Responsibilities are the bane of the Adventurer? / "Who would want to be preside king?

I am kind of afraid of the 4x stuff, since
- all my conquest games usually end with "I have to move how many units across the water"
- instead try to get every religion/wonder on my tiny island (and nuke anyone looking shifty/ stole one of my workers in the ancient age).

As whole I really enjoyed the last arc, especially Visery's upbeat tone. The great success of mad science the Arcanums are. ..Malarys. Davos!
(My ideal Viserys get's really exited about what manner of gribbly he gets to fight/eat/integrate into his glorious realm)

Dang, why did I realize that just now, I want to make our own Mechanicsburg! xD

So where do we go from here? Short of a quest re-boot I just have to keep playing catch up integrating magic into the setting without being so rushed that you guys call it up as as forced. I like to think I have been getting on top of it since the armor quest and its unfortunate encounters... but apparently my most recent attempt at making things work together has still fallen short.

Click to shrink...

We could be retiring Viserys as main viewpoint character and steer in the broad strokes?
I would love for example to play as one of our; mage students/ retiring pirate/ Davos/ beginning priestess of Yss/ renegade Arcanum.
Sorcerors Deep is so interesting, I really want to play around in it.

 

[MTB]

Like conquered city - how to handle the resistance? The burned granaries, corrupt clerks etc.? (That's more the intrigue part of the CK2-style quest).

 

[Goldfish]

So where do we go from here? Short of a quest re-boot I just have to keep playing catch up integrating magic into the setting without being so rushed that you guys call it up as as forced. I like to think I have been getting on top of it since the armor quest and its unfortunate encounters... but apparently my most recent attempt at making things work together has still fallen short.

Click to shrink...

What? No! People are getting salty over some legitimate concerns, but a ton of it is a direct result of our own actions. We're all over the place, sticking our noses in a dozen different places, poking and prodding the encounter tables while trying to put out fires that we think no one else is willing or able to handle.

A lot of the stuff we're involving ourselves in is reasonably dangerous, because a great deal of magic or supernatural interest is tied into what drew out attention in the first place.

Not everything has to be CR level appropriate. Let us go somewhere and just run roughshod over the place because we are basically superhuman demigods among muggle commoners. I agree with @Chulupey's suggestion to make challenges location based, to a certain extent. Not everything we do needs to be an actual existential challenge. At the same time, set clear boundaries in place to tell us where we should not interfere, as we are too low level to do so safely.

We get a sudden desire to conquer Avernus? Put some warnings out that we are about to attempt something far beyond our level. Pentos, on the other hand, shouldn't present us any sort of reasonable challenge if we decided we were going to walk in, find Illyrio, murder him in broad daylight while surrounded by citizens, then take all of his shit.

Honestly, there really shouldn't be many places left on Planetos where we couldn't roll in and curbstomp everyone and everything present. That's not unusual in any setting, it just normally takes much longer to reach the appropriate level. With Planetos only recently getting back in touch with its magic side, there hasn't been time and opportunity for the world to be saturated in the truly powerful creatures that would require us to be in the high Epic levels to force our will on an entire continent. What we can do at level 15 on Planetos would require level 40 Epic munchkins to do on Faerun.

Sorry if I've rambled through this, I just think the salt is getting out of hand to a large degree, and I think most of it is our fault for interacting with the system in the way we have chosen. Relatively simple changes would probably prevent most of it, though.

 

[Evaunit02mark1]

@DragonParadox I think that you're thinking we need appropriate challenges to keep us engaged no matter where we go, while I think that on the contrary, we are too challanged. Sure, we are powerful on paper, but it has gotten to the point where we literally can't leave SD without ramming head first into some CR appropriate encounter (you've basically admitted to this a few minutes ago), which breaks immersion hard. It has gotten to the point where SD is this island of sanity and beyond it is a sea of monsters all too willing to drag us down to a blender and time sink us if we even set a foot away from it, even if all we want is to talk with Noble X.

Another point to bear in mind is that we are following DnD mechanichs (CR appropriate encounters) but DnD was not build for Westeros. If this were a normal tabletop rpg then we'd murderhobo the threat and move on... but we're not in a normal setting. A CR 15 encounter means weeks of work and thousends of gold to deal with the fallout of said encounter. In dnd the adventurers murder and loot the devil, in ASOIAF we have to root out summoners, deal with the city's overlord, diplomance him, deal with prestige fallout, hand out magic items, etc etc etc. The setting simply isn't built for CR appropriate adventurer attuned encounter tables of the high level, and I feel that all of us as a thread are going to have to find a way to fix that because the problem is getting worse with each level up, and soon we'll be reduced to one fetch quest a month followed by 3 months of fallout handling (justifiably, since you can't just ignore the fluff of a CR 20 threat) in some sort of recursive fibonacci pattern of timesinks.

Click to shrink...

I think just allowing us some successes here and there without having to face CR-appropriate challenges every time would go a long way. I mean sure, it wouldn't be challenging, but by this point we're strong enough that some things just shouldn't be challenging.

It's an odd case of needing balance by backing off and not trying to balance with CR-appropriate encounters all the time. Sometimes we just want a proper curbstomp. This is along the same vein as people wanting Viserys to really shine in battle, then being foiled in their wishes when Viserys dumps on himself if he's not 100% successful. There's got to be some unambiguous triumph here and there that people just feel good about, that has a tangible benefit, and that isn't tainted by something getting away or something going wrong.

I think allowing us at least a chance at a victory like that would go a long way. For example, remember how happy we were when we crushed Stannis' fleet? Even when you told us we couldn't take all the ships, we were still thrilled because it was the most powerful we'd felt in a long time.

Click to shrink...

Both of these hit the nail on the head for me.

We're powerful, we've been gaining power left right and center because that's the only thing we've been doing.

Our main goal is to become strong enough to take back the ugly chair that the fat drunken bastard is currently banging his latest mistress in, but we've been constantly getting sidetracked by a world growing increasingly mad as time goes on.

I mean we just dealt with Demon ninjas, then a member of the Wild hunt, and before that we had to deal with the Lich and the Land Warden thing, and before that it was the damn squids (which we still have to deal with btw), and I could go on and on and on.

We've gone beyond trying to reclaim a kingdom into the world's only functional fire extinguisher after these assholes just learned about fire insurance.

And while we now know other folks have to deal with this shit as well, it doesn't feel like they do and or/learn from their mistakes if that makes sense.

It feels like everytime we so much as glance outside of our carefully controlled and maintained kingdom some ancient evil is either being poked, waking up, being summoned for a quick buck, specifically pissed at us, or just happens to be hanging around and grabbing a pint when we showed up and decided to have a go.

I mean actions have consequences and we haven't exactly been making friends but something's got to give at some point.

It's honestly gotten to the point where a lot of us are considering burning shit first and talking about it after we've taken their skulls and looted the corpses.

 

[Crake]

I'm rather attached to Viserys and having him as our viewpoint character is a big reason why I got super into this quest to begin with.

 

[egoo]

Okay, seeing as DP went to sleep, can someone tell me, what were our timescales for getting new mages from Scholarum and new triton tribes at SD and how long are we from that?
For some reason, I just can't get the question out of my head and searching through SV with a phone is a pain in the ass
*Edit* Holy shit, 55 users viewing, the biggest I've ever seen on this quest' page. Guess the problem is really there, seeing as so many people pay such attention to it's discussion.

 

[Tomcost]

I haven't seen any diplomancy options on the turn vote available, except for Fenly and Illyrio.

And I've fought very hard for both of those.

Click to shrink...

Well, there is taking Waymar to Runestone, the rumormongering across Westeros, the intrigue missions to any random city. Before there was speaking to Zherys about that alliance, speaking to the Tritons, speaking to Relath.

Heck, even diplomancing Saan was still diplomacy, even if we were helped by our magical might as an incentive to not fuck with us.

 

[Goldfish]

Okay, setting the salt aside for the moment, as I think a lot of it is blown out of proportions or simply misplaced, we've got one more major event to take care of this turn.

Bloodraven is currently allotted 10 days in the schedule. That's a lot of time, and given the way other tasks have gone this turn, we are likely to finish it early. Instead of trying to cram another sidequest into that time, why don't we just chill out in SD? Spend the time talking to Malarys, learn more of Valyria, get a feel for his character and maybe access his character sheet sooner? Or maybe we can spend the rest of that time on an impromptu Westerosi pub crawl, spreading the legend of the kindly, exiled Targaryen prince?

For next turn, rather than compiling a list of ten or twelve tasks to be accomplished by various party members, let's just choose a single task. One goal that we are going to follow to its logical conclusion. Other stuff can happen, as we find stuff for party members to do.

For example, say we chose the Illyrio route. We don't just go to Pentos and investigate. Instead we go, investigate, find him. Then we systematically dismantle his entire mercantile empire, steal everything he owns, co-opt all of his contacts, kill those who we aren't willing to work with, and then move on to his co-conspirators. We can follow the trail that leads to Varys, track him down, then give him the Illyrio treatment. And so on, until we have undone a huge conspiracy and removed it as a threat. We could work at this the entire turn, until we have dug it up, root and branch. Shit is happening elsewhere? So what, let it burn or let someone else fix it.

 

[Karmic Acumen]

The thing is you guys take actions to poke things, and that is the ordinary run of a quest. But if you really want a quiet month just don't go adventuring in the classical sense to a while. Stay in SD have your plans and character moments. I certainly would not mind and no the world will not blow up in the meanwhile.

Click to shrink...

That sounds unfortunately like being put under house arrest.

It should be completely reasonable to do a tavern crawl or whatever else without random encounters.

This attachment to "always CR-appropriate" has also, I feel, done far too much damage to the story's consistency and general enjoyment, if I'm reading the thread right. There are plenty of RPGs and other games that do just fine with enemies without autoleveling. The Elder Scroll series, for example, have plenty of high-level areas and plots without turning every cliff racer into a dragon. Oblivion got a lot of flack for stepping away from that, incidentally.

So what if Viserys can stomp on some of his enemies? He should be allowed to. He's worked for his power and 99.99 of everyone else on Planetos are scrubs. Maybe you should let them be scrubs without some Diabolus Ex Machina enemy hijacking the party every time they step out of their front door.

Food for thought.

Dropping the CR-appropriate thing and looking more at common sense and setting consistency would also have the "benefit" of slowing down experience gain, breaking this "must catch up" phenomenon while bringing both satisfaction as well as novelty to a system that has clearly not aged well.

 

[Azel]

Well, there is taking Waymar to Runestone, the rumormongering across Westeros, the intrigue missions to any random city. Before there was speaking to Zherys about that alliance, speaking to the Tritons, speaking to Relath.

Heck, even diplomancing Saan was still diplomacy, even if we were helped by our magical might as an incentive to not fuck with us.

Click to shrink...

Waymar was a non-starter this turn with his lopsidedness, otherwise I would have pushed for that.
Rumor-mongering was pushed out by Bloodraven, Armor and Renly. Odds are, that would have been a few random encounters.
We are doing two of those this month with Agent M and Agent G. Viserys time was always deemed to valuable for that and I'm inclined to agree.