- Location
- florida
Monsters have consistently worn or been there best loot.
See Medusa scale necklace...
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
See Medusa scale necklace...
- Location
- Chile
If I may DP, I think you're approaching this from the wrong end. Instead of arbitrarily upping encounter CR, maybe you could up the difficulty of the Grand Campaign aspect of the quest. That is to say, the strategic difficulty.
Maybe the Sultan does send a small army to whatever place in the PoB to form a beach head. Maybe a devil plot we werent looking at gives massive payoff and now there's a portal in the Stormlands or whatever, or now all of Pentos' rulling class are devils in disguise because the idiots carried out one too many pacts.
Honestly I think that if nothing is done the problem will somewhat fix itself in time. We're due for a three front war (one of them interplanar) after founding the empire, all against tough opponents which will be leagues away from the level of Tyroshi magisters. Does not fix the problem right now though... because it will be a full OOC year at this rate before we're rolling up our sleeves and going all Winston Churchill and Eisenhower trying to keep the empire in one piece and expanding while fighting all these wars.
I think part of the solution could be to make the Quest move forward more rapidly. Its just too slow a pace and that magnifies every bad point ASWAH has beyond proportion. Perhaps actions and crafting could be generilised and simplified? Being less stingy with how much Lya or whoemever can craft for us for which days and etc, along with perhaps returning to an action based turn plan (instead of day based) could go a long way towards making us stop squeezing blood out of stone with every single hour of the day and thereby slowing down time to a crawl.
Just some thoughts.
- Location
- Australia
I believe that is more often the case in random encounters rather than deliberately sought out dungeons.
However if the Medusa is wearing the loot then it will be either A) Underwhelming or B) Significant enough that she crushes our babies.
- Location
- United States
Well, this is odd. Valyrians and apparently those of the dragonblood in general have an overall attraction to fiends and fiendblooded, but Efreeti like to play around with celestials? Either way, I totally want to see if this woman would like to come work for us after all this is over.
- Location
- Chile
You hit the nail in the head with this one. Reading about our Westerosi sleuthing was x10 times more entertaining than extra planar adventuring, but maybe thats just a Hard Imperialist thing (probably is tbh).
Ultimately, I think we might be outgrowing dnd. Focusing on politics, intrigue and research would be a hell of a lot of fun, and might lend a bit more credence to our ambitions... because honestly and completely letting aside my ambitions for our plans, there's no way in hell Myr -for example- will fall to us with the lackluster effort we've put up. It would just feel cheep, but it feels its the only option because there's just no time to do better...
Then again, my eyes mostly glaze over the combat and have done so except for the showy bits for months now, so it could be my bias talking.
@DragonParadox
I think another possible fix could be to just kind of... let the interplanar stuff fall down the wayside of the narrative. You could even sell it IC as that because everyone and their mother is immortal at those levels things move super slowly, so we can concentrate on planetos.
Dont get me wrong, Outsiders have great loot and are a fun piece of worldbuilding, but in the end dealing with them is a timesink for both Adventure Faction(at least for the big ticket items like Qohor, Valyria, Deep North, Sothoryos, and many more potentially high level dungeons that have something to do with planetos lore) and Imperialist Factions. If we just kept things concentrated to our plane, we could spend more time looting Valyria and visiting Qohor and IC designing flying castles and intruiging Westeros.
I'm definitively leery of leaving Viserys' POV any time soon. After years of buildup, not seeing him stomping everyone in Westeros and bringing about a social and economic revolution step by step and by his own hand would be give me the biggest blue balls in history!
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- Location
- United States
[X] Goldfish
I'm tempte to ask about the special loot, but that would tip our hand too much. :.
Anyway, back to the debate at hand, I wouldn't mind a shift towards politics, but I'm definitely unwilling to completely turn away from extraplanar stuff. There's politics there that I'm interested in as well, like our war against the Brazen Throne. And more importantly for me they are fabulously wealthy. I never want to stop fighting them.
I'm tempte to ask about the special loot, but that would tip our hand too much. :.
Anyway, back to the debate at hand, I wouldn't mind a shift towards politics, but I'm definitely unwilling to completely turn away from extraplanar stuff. There's politics there that I'm interested in as well, like our war against the Brazen Throne. And more importantly for me they are fabulously wealthy. I never want to stop fighting them.
- Location
- Chile
We could be raiding Valyria though. Forty Family tombs have all the loot you could ever want + they are more tied with the setting.
The genies have been duking it out for millenia, cooling their heels off while we focus on Planetos for a more engaging mid-midlate game shouldnt be out of the question.
Ultimately though, I suppose that wouldnt directly adress the problem at hand (lack of meaningful challange)... I'm realizing I may have sneaked my pet peeve into this, though both problems are somewhat related...
- Location
- Brazil
Two things: preparation and economy of action.
If one party has the opportunity to prepared for a battle, it's at a massive advantage. That's how the system rolls, and honestly, it's a fair way of running things.
So Baelor should have buffed more. Which brings us to the second point: economy of action.
Read, fights against lone BBEG are known to be problematic to balance. Either the BBEG stomps the party, or it's stomped.
So add in some minion archons or angels on its side, which could have pooled their many SLAs before the battle began.
Note I agree with @egoo 's point: we are a very big fish, but we usually swimm in a pond that's medium-sized at best.
People have been talking about "raiding Baator/the Abyss", but they don't realize that it's perfectly reasonable for, say, a Pit Fiend and his three Cornugon bodyguards and their dozen Advanced Erynies/Ice Devils minions to show up to see what all the fuss is about.
Or for a Balor to call in a chip with a peer and Summon him for backup if he knows a fight will be tough. And thanks to Mammon, that's a reasonable thing for him to do.
Or half a dozen mages start tossing Orbs of Force.
We can still be stomped, easily. It's just a matter of not being a little punk of an adventurer anymore, but a credible threat to more or less everyone. So have them do to us as we do to them, if you can't/shouldn't reasonably bring in individual high-CR opponents, bring in lots of well-prepared mid-CR ones.
But hey, we've spent literally years by now carefully building our party just so we can avoid this kind of thing. IMO, people who do not have well-rounded defenses and abilities, no matter how powerful in their niche, aren't truly Big Leagues material. Not by themselves. You don't spect to kill Elminster or Blackstaff by just throwing a Finger of Death at him and hoping for a low roll.
The Prison Break act, for example, was quite taxing for the party, with our most powerful spellcasters, the prepared folks, having to withhold entirely from action due to simply running out of the good stuff.
I've suggested Lair Action before to DP.
Do note: I've never really cared for just... exploring things.
Except here. Sothoryos, for example? Was amazing. Mystery abound, a tough unkown enemy, perilous exploration, and many interesting answers that just gave us even more interesting questions. Hell, just going "Imma wrestle that dinosaur" was fun to watch.
Same thing every time we go about discovering things, or exploring places.
Like someone said, you shouldn't apologize for no-action updates. Your worldbuilding is par excellence, DP.
So don't worry there's not "enough action". The writing is more than good enough to keep us hooked without pumping adrenaline.
Rt
Seeing a hyper-hard enemy be neatly countered by out layered preparation is great.
It's not a matter of fights being easy so much as us usually holding the key advantage of preparation, i.e, going in buffed to the guills.
Which would be a bitch if they had buffed their saves with their many SLAs and had Protection from Fire running.
Even then, they'd still accomplish their purpose: draw away fire from Baelor.
+1
I dislike that we took the Create Deminplane spells as perfectly average thing. Not every spell that's on the book must exist, or at least be easily accessible, for obvious reasons.
I mostly stand against these shenanigans as they'd apparently be unprecedented. Which makes no sense, if demiplane creation is this simple and trivial, they should be everywhere.
So I'd want to hear a good explanation of why this isn't common practice yet.
These two quotes exemplify my dislike for bounded accuracy, btw. Not everyone should be a threat to everything, or the world either feels arbitrary or small.
Also why I'm taking very careful steps in building my own setting. Everything ought to be reasonably justified IC.
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- Location
- United States
Sure. We could raid Valyria. We're even doing it this turn at the end of the month. But I don't want to set aside extraplanar stuff. Not everyone is bored by it, and the loot there, while not necessarily flavorfully tied to the ASOIAF setting, is still great nonetheless. Who would say no to literal tons of adamantine?
I don't mind a shift in focus towards more things on Prime Material, but I very much want the occasional trip off the plane. For example, we're overdue for the trip with Relath to the Plane of Water to ward off any opportunistic players there who might want to try their luck in Prime Material.
- Location
- Australia
I expressed concern about Planar dominance thousands of pages ago but we got dragged there, partly by choice but also because things were behind a Planar paywall. DP has said many times before that we would have to go Off-Plane to get the things we want be it spells or materials at half the price and we knew it IC, it would be insane not to go, it would make Viserys a bad King not to take that advantage for his realm.
The same reason you enjoy planar excursions so much is the same reason it makes Planetos irrelevant.
Who would say no to literal tons of adamantine? Nobody, but if we weren't off plane the question would never have been asked.
We don't even have a proper Imperial Mine because it's cheaper, easier and faster to just trade with the Xorn. What kind of Empire doesn't have it's own mine
- Location
- Here and there
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ill chime in to agree that threats on a strategic level seem almost nonexistent right now.
The seven? We just kicked their saint's head in.
Slaver's bay? Waiting to die, although to be fair we weakened that one.
If their's anything bugging me about the quest right now, it's that Westeros, the main event, has failed to properly scale as a foe. We do have some advantages; our tactics are malleable, we put our focus single mindedly into increasing our magical strength, but Westeros still has way more people and resources to draw from.
Maybe it just looks that way, or maybe it's by design but either way, Westeros more or less feels like it has been unchanged by magic, with the exception of demons being mixed amongst the bandits. I'm somewhat surprised that no major threats have come up since we repelled that naval assault.
The seven? We just kicked their saint's head in.
Slaver's bay? Waiting to die, although to be fair we weakened that one.
If their's anything bugging me about the quest right now, it's that Westeros, the main event, has failed to properly scale as a foe. We do have some advantages; our tactics are malleable, we put our focus single mindedly into increasing our magical strength, but Westeros still has way more people and resources to draw from.
Maybe it just looks that way, or maybe it's by design but either way, Westeros more or less feels like it has been unchanged by magic, with the exception of demons being mixed amongst the bandits. I'm somewhat surprised that no major threats have come up since we repelled that naval assault.
- Location
- United States
And this is why I'm going to stand against you on this. We worked hard for those connections to cheaply get iron in the first place and it paid off. Why shouldn't we reap the rewards? Again, I'd accept a shift towards more Prime Material stuff, but a wholesale stop on all extraplanar activity? No. I'd fight that.The same reason you enjoy planar excursions so much is the same reason it makes Planetos irrelevant.
Who would say no to literal tons of adamantine? Nobody, but if we weren't off plane the question would never have been asked.
We don't even have a proper Imperial Mine because it's cheaper, easier and faster to just trade with the Xorn. What kind of Empire doesn't have it's own mine
- Location
- Brazil
There's no reason an acceptable balance can't be achieved.
I'd say the most important thing for us to reach harmony is to just... slow down for a bit. Accept that things take time, that not everything needs to get done in five days or less.
Some research should take months at least, and that's going at what's essentially war-time speeds.
If we can accept a more reasonable standard of time for such a things, I believe we will be able to hold ourselves at far greater ease when it comes to scheduling.
- Location
- Germany
Putting the planes back into the bottle is definitely impossible by now. Which is a shame, since they are by far my least favourite part of the quest, always carrying that generic D&D blandness.
Frankly though, I'm not seeing a shift to politics happening. Right here and now, a lot of people expressed yet again their desire to go on many, many dungeon dives. The assertion that ruling the Imperium takes time is simply false. We rarely spend time on it since turn-votes are always a mad scramble to cram as many excursions into Viserys time as possible.
The only vaguely political actions we are doing this month are 2 days for Grafton and 1 day for the Iron Isles. Everything else is adventuring.
And this rush is what has started to ruin the strategic game, as it got ever shallower and we keep winning for no adequately explained reason by talking to someone for 2 updates. Then it's off to 10 updates of random fighting.
Frankly though, I'm not seeing a shift to politics happening. Right here and now, a lot of people expressed yet again their desire to go on many, many dungeon dives. The assertion that ruling the Imperium takes time is simply false. We rarely spend time on it since turn-votes are always a mad scramble to cram as many excursions into Viserys time as possible.
The only vaguely political actions we are doing this month are 2 days for Grafton and 1 day for the Iron Isles. Everything else is adventuring.
And this rush is what has started to ruin the strategic game, as it got ever shallower and we keep winning for no adequately explained reason by talking to someone for 2 updates. Then it's off to 10 updates of random fighting.
- Location
- Australia
- Location
- Australia
Agreed, unfortunately so, on all levels.
Unless we break the Spheres again...was Aunty Tiamat our route to preventing Planar incursion?
- Location
- United States
Things change. That was before we were at outright war with the Brazen Throne and raking in loot by the ton.
- Location
- Germany
Any action that takes months might as well never complete at all as people are unwilling to not cram Viserys schedule with raiding, fighting and exploring, thus slowing time to a crawl.
Agreed. Just as an example, today we skipped over a tremendous amount of information gathering that I would have very much liked to see and play through.
- Location
- florida
I'd be up for some more schmoozing. Wanna talk to Goldfish about it?
- Location
- Australia
We're a big fish, in vanilla DnD it often doesn't matter if you chill out and craft for a few months to catch up to your level. Here if we chill out for a few months the Illithid win, the Devil's, Daemons, Others and Fey all win until they lose to each other.
Our enemies are on an accelerated pace and so we must be too, we're so goddamn busy all the time we still haven't done much to prepare against the Illithid when that was the whole point of the ceasefire, time to prepare.
We just reprioritised the enemies who weren't in a ceasefire because they kept fucking shit up.
I wish I had a solution to slowing things down that would make sense in-world and not make Viserys a negligent prick of a King, unworthy of the narrative to date.
- Location
- Germany
Well, it would certainly help if we bothered to check up on Zherys and Phassen.
Also should kinda prepare Tolos and Mantarys for integration.
And finally start the Tyrosh Scholarium branch. There's a minor action for it this month already.
Edit: And finally talk to the Tritons again. They need more integration and Anti-Illithid planning.
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