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[Episode 14 Q&A] Speak of the Devil

RollPlay®: Court of Swords
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#42

Divided xp was 159 between 3, so 477 total xp

100 xp for the scout, 75 xp for the 3 guards, 200 xp for the 4 zombies, and assuming the wizard was 50 xp, total combat xp is 425. 50 extra xp for the zombies with heavy armor and 30ft radius bullshit explosions? Also no xp for obtaining Wester’s bracelet despite being a very clear character objective (pgs 81 and 260 of the DMG), and an uphill battle for the past few weeks. Not asking for the players to find a treasure hoard in the cart, but throw them some sort of bone.

Every single guard also has a crossbow with an extra +1 to hit (they have a +4 instead of a +3), while still retaining their high ac and low cr. The logistics of equipping every small-town guard with heavy armor and crossbows doesn’t make sense with how poor everybody seems to be. Bandits have a much more balanced stat block if you want every guard to have a crossbow, but constantly throwing large amounts of low cr creatures at the players is deadly at any level.

5e makes a lot of suggestions that should be completely ignored, such as the encounter building rules, adventuring days, and treasure hoards that only give the players an ocean of money by level 10, with nothing to spend it on.

#43

The courts seem to be totalitarian states. Government controls everything pretty much and all the citizens do is farm or trade. Looking at totalitarian states of history as well as those that exist today, the military tends to be the best equipped facet of every government, at least as far as the government is able to equip them. This would be vastly different from say, the US, where the military gets an enormous budget, but does not buy the best on the market and instead goes for “best mass produced quality”. Instead we’re looking at something like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia where everything that was new and awesome went to the military first and then bled out into the private sector, if there was a private sector.

#44

Would just like to point out we know more about the Court of Swords than the other courts which could be run in a totally different manner should your theory prove to be correct.

2 Likes
#45

Wouldent it make sens to give xp for the so called quest they are on when they hand it in ? aka when they are back in town and have handed in the bracelet to the dude who asked em to get it ?

#46

I lost my shit when the zombies came to life, like… SERIOUSLY? Adam is just out to kill them, he actually looked a bit sad when they all succeeded the saving throw of the explosion, how is this world gonna progress when the characters always dies?! TPK would´ve been the worst!

Deep inside I know that Adam hates to kill PC’s, but after each episode that knowledge keeps sinking deeper and deeper. If there were gambles on CoS the odds of Day9 dying the first hour would be super low, honestly!

Thank god JP is powerplaying the strongest fucking shapeshifting tanking, healing druid that he is otherwise we´d have new characters each session! Don´t fucking tell me it gets easier when they level up because Adam is just gonna throw them harder NPCs to deal with!

But I love it. I do, the suspense, the nervewrecking crits and the comebacks. To beat the odds and survive, the sense of death lingering behind every footstep. To think “how will Adam fuck them up now?” Its fun! I love it.

#47

Yeah, they can have XP when they actually complete a goal. Not when they’re part-way there.

#48

Just as a side… side note… alot of ppl including myself wants to know where the crew is in terms of XP and thier currently lvl. Would it make sens to make some kind of easy to see xp bar with base info “x ammount of xp to next lvl” including current lvl in the base overlay for each member currently activ in the show ?

4 Likes
#49

It actually does get easier. D&D is, as always, notoriously deadly early and hilariously not deadly later. The options characters have in the mid levels are varied and easily out optimize any “deadly” encounter you throw at them.

Any GM can kill the players if they want, especially in D&D. Obviously he could just throw an ancient red dragon at em. But following the encounter rules for what is appropriate level based challenges for players, players outscale and beat the crap out of stuff quite easily at level 5 and above, when people are getting spells like haste, fireball, and shit like multiple attacks a turn. And more spell access so players like JP and Dan can just use all their level 1 spells for healing word to heal whoever goes down instead of being hamstrung by limited spells.

Adam seems to be following those encounter rules quite reasonably and explicitly from what I can tell with the bare exception of that weird necrosplosion thing, but that was more flavor than trying to be “fair.”

Even now, as JP and Dan have shown, a bit of system mastery makes these “impossible” looking fights, with “unfair” twists at the end ACTUALLY not so hard. They have a well built team now and a series of “rough” fights end with them all alive.

2 Likes
#50

As nice as that’d be, there’s only roughly one time they generally show stats where it would fit without being a glare and mess if there’s Overlays. Either contributing to cluttering a clean display or distracting from the players. Also since they do exp mid session it could become an annoyance for JP (IMO) to add them in mid session. The best place would be adding them somewhere to character stats, but we only really see those a few times a session.

It’s a nice idea and something to think about, I just worry about it taking away(distracting) from some of the other things we enjoy.

#51

Personaly I wouldent ask that JP or anyone had to update xp mid show. I see it more like when they do a recap @ the start / end of the show… such stuff would be adressed. I know its just more work, but again! I personaly do care to have this information. Currently im looking true the original rollplay show, im @ week 36 and one the biggest things that annoy me is that the all that xp info and rolls from the GM is hidden away from me.

2 Likes
#52

That sounds a bit more reasonable, still might be difficult to do but would be interesting if it could happen.

#53

Holy crap I just realized how smart/lucky JP was that he didn’t revert back to caster form after they’d killed the guards but before Dan accidentally summoned the zombies.

1 Like
#54

You described the Mara like the Daedra, does that mean all of them aren’t necessarily evil like the Daedric princes?
Some of the princes are outright good and some are just neutral like sanguine who’s a big prankster and Sheogorath who is just an insane deity, are the Mara similar in a sense that they just have their own agendas but not necessarily good or bad?

1 Like
#55

I think if we looked to the Courts for an answer they would outright just say the Mara are evil and must be defeated/hunted or what-have you. I think Adam could be flexible enough that if he wanted he could show another faucet of Mara that might not be pure death. It’s something that could go either way, especially since Adams developing the world as he’s going.

#56

There’s no good or evil in any cosmological sense in this world. The Mara are a bit inscrutable, and it would make sense that at some point someone harnessed the power of the Mara for a selfless task. I think the trick is that there’s so much indoctrination that the truth is a near impossible thing to wrangle.

#57

Would be an interesting thing to see if they get out of the borders of court lands and meet a town of Mara followers and it’s a utopia. Would make some interesting grey the characters could mentally sludge through seeming as they are under the impression they are only demonic entities.

#58

Hi Adam, I have a hacking question if that’s cool.

I have watched a lot of Office Hours and a lot of the back and forth between you and Steven for West Marches (Hack Attack: https://youtu.be/NW9mSaRCnLA?list=PLAmPx8nWedFXj-RMyHdOfK_-bDPqf1WWL). They’re so much fun, and they suggest you might be thinking about getting your toolkit out and taking a look under the hood to make some adjustments to the system; although they also suggest that you might stick to the rules, as you would’ve come into this knowing where problems might be, and so perhaps you’re just accepting them!

I can see lots of additional arguments on both sides, so I thought it best to go to the mountain and ask the man himself :slight_smile:

Thanks. (& thanks for making Life is Strange such a fun experience to watch!)

#59

I’m a bit confused as to JP’s druid skills. He seems a lot more over-powered then the other players, and I think it is unnaturally balancing the campaign.

I looked it up, and druids can’t change into the animals that he is changing into at the level he is changing into them. I hate to bring this up of course, because they seem to be having SUCH a hard time with the game even at this state of imbalance. However, I worry that the other players may be outshined because of the misinterpretation of wild shape. He has to grow up the various levels before he can turn into the big creatures. He starts at challenge level 1/4 at level 2., then challenge level 1/2 at level 4, and challenge level 1 at level 8.

Black Bear - 1/2 cr
Tiger - 1 cr
Giant Hyena - 1 cr (the hyena with the rampage ability is a CR 1, and a regular hyena (CR0) has a lot less hp [5hp] and a no special ability.)

I’m not bringing this up to get JP in trouble, but I’m just noting that it might make the other players feel like shit.

Then again, with Adam’s rolling, maybe they need to cheat? :smiley:

#60

Circle of the moon PHB p69 :itmejpgmref: :

Circle Forms
The rites of your circle grant you the ability to transform
into more dangerous animal forms. Starting at 2nd
level, you can use your Wild Shape to transform into a
beast with a challenge rating as high as 1 (you ignore
the Max. CR column of the Beast Shapes table, but must
abide by the other limitations there).

2 Likes
#61

Good point! Haha. I didn’t know he specialized in that. Nevermind. P.S. Thanks!