You'll have to remind me, but has he sought out any of these languages in the past? Or was he just expecting to run across them eventually? Which languages? There are three 'dead' languages in the setting that I know of, which are Nestari (ancient elven), Kolshet (ancient ogre) and Ergothian (ancient human). All three of these languages fell out of use by the Age of Might. (I'll also point out that even if he had access to these languages right now, he currently lacks the NWP slots to learn any of them.)Haahque wrote:*He could have; by now, at least encountered some ancient languages so that he can begin studying them.
According to the DMG, researching new spells takes time and money. For time, the minimum amount is two weeks per spell level. For money, he needs access to a wizard's lab and 100-1,000 STP per spell level for basic research costs. It states, "A wizard who lacks a laboratory must come up with the cost of assembling one...should be...perhaps 1,000 to 10,000 [STP]."Haahque wrote:*I realize I was wildly off the mark on how affluent the characters in this campaign were going to be, but is developing his own lab the only way he could do this? The only other apparent way is to use Magnus's lab, which is much more dangerous and shrouded in time-shift purgatory.
But even if he had the money to build a lab (where would he build it?) and the money to start researching right now, do you know what spells he would be researching right now? Keeping in mind he's only able to cast 1st and 2nd level spells, I'm not sure what he could come up with in that power range that would be of particular value to his goals.
I can understand that. But without the downtime, we'd run into problems. For instance, if I start the next chapter the very next day, Chris won't be able to post at all because his character will still be unconscious. I also started increasing the downtime because I didn't want this game to last another 10 years. War of the Lance is three years old and we haven't even reached winter yet. The occupation doesn't end until the spring. Without the increased downtime, it's going to be a loooooong time before we get there.Haahque wrote:While I understand the desire for downtime, I don't feel like it's appropriate for Haahqae's specific circumstances right now; he would not have downtime at a time like this!
Besides that, but the other problem with Haahqae going on dangerous missions during the downtime is that everyone else is left waiting for him to finish what is essentially a dungeon crawl (guards, traps, etc.) before we can start up the new chapter.
Haahqae's successes? The mine job, the giant job, and the vault heist are all the big ones that stick out in my mind. Unless the metric for success you use is only 'everything went exactly as planned 100%.'Haahque wrote:It might help if you list some successes, because I sort of feel like he's just slowly bleeding out resources as the situation constantly gets harder for him with very little, if any, success.
I agree, but the thing is, Haahqae assumed his actions would have no effect on others. He believed either he would succeed and there would be no consequences at all or he would fail and he would pay the consequences himself. Even now, as he's planning to find Ismene and bust her out of wherever she is being held, not once does he stop and think about how this might affect others. He doesn't think about what the army is going to do if a suspected terrorist in custody vanishes.Haahque wrote:Certainly not the result I was hoping for after a string of previous failures when I thought I had a victory for once.
He though that if the army even discovered the theft in the first place, they would take no action at all. He didn't realize that the army would sooner scapegoat an innocent than admit they aren't in complete control.
If he never comes to terms with this, or simply decides he doesn't care who suffers as long as he gets what he wants, he will most likely continue to make the occupation worse in the long run.
Fair enough. But it also sounds like you are basically saying, overall, that your two choices are this or complete and total success. The other PCs are all facing similar failures, some far worse than Haahqae's (Grubnick not only failed to save Delharn, but he got a bunch of his people killed in the process, for instance). But none of them seem to be on the edge of insanity or suicide (Depression, sure. The whole occupation is pretty depressing, so that's fair).Haahque wrote:However it is not my hope to roleplay it to the point where it drives Haahqae insane, suicidal or into depression.
Ultimately, that's up to you. It's not my place to tell a player how they should or should not play their character.Haahque wrote:But should he even be allowed to learn from his failures with such a low wisdom? Is that character development or bad roleplaying portraying my character poorly? Should I go back to roleplaying Haahqae as a foolish carefree gnome who just wishes to crack a joke, help others and persue his life quest without regards to the team composition or lasting implications before doing a mission? Would that be staying true to his character or ignoring his character development?
In my own opinion, though, I think while ability scores should certainly influence a character's actions, they should not be a straitjacket that forces them a certain way. Because, that, to me, isn't really fair. To say that Haahqae is incapable of learning from his mistakes unless he employs multiple Wish spells is very limiting. It means character development is pretty much impossible. That doesn't sound very fun to me.
Of course, if you believe that turning the clock back and having Haahqae return to his older persona would make the game more fun for you, then obviously you should do that.
I admit, War of the Lance has very much been an experiment. I first got the idea when I was reading up on Haven and learned that before the occupation, it had a population of 5k but 10k refugees living in a city. And I started to wonder what that would be like. And whether people would have been happy or upset when those 10k refugees were basically deported, but only because an evil regime took over.Haahque wrote:As I mentioned before I had a false impression of the campaign when I started it, it was "Some guy's going to run a play by post campaign and I'm joining, do you want to join too?" Sort of thing, I must have glossed over the details of it being a dark campaign with significantly more failure and hardship then success and accomplishment. Those false impressions were only reinforced when it started out like a typical campaign with readily available quests, lots of early loot and relatively easy XP.
The beginning of the game was much more like a traditional D&D game, with dungeons and monster slaying and looting chests, and so forth. Partly this was because in order to emphasize how different things would be under the occupation, I needed to show what they were like beforehand. But another reason was I quickly realized that in a game where the PCs could just go on adventures and earn coin, they wouldn't really care about the occupation. The PCs would basically be immune to the trials and troubles the citizens of Haven would be forced to endure. Would Kendra still have taken a job with the army if she could have just used her hundreds of steel coins to take care of her family instead? Would Arulia have struggled to keep her family safe if she could just buy them a mansion in the noble district? The occupation would have been a minor nuisance, at best, to adventurers. As long as they could still go on adventures and get rich that way, I wasn't sure they would even care that much.
(However, for those who are interested in a more traditional sort of D&D game, I am running Doom of Daggerdale over on my site. It's only just started, and we have four players, but the module would allow for up to two more, if anyone has the time to join another game and wants something a little more simpler. It's Forgotten Realms, though, not Dragonlance.)
Well, Miracle's consciousness is fairly new. She wasn't a sapient creature before she was summoned. These are all new ideas to her. Previously, she never thought of anything beyond eating, sleeping, pooping and mating. So sometimes I think about having her speak up, but then I start to question if she would even understand what was happening enough to comment on it.Haahque wrote:On the flip side, I saw summoning a familiar as a great role-playing opportunity. There was a creature where I could converse with at any time and confide secrets in, giving endless roleplay opportunities between Haahqae, Miracle, Ismene and Arcane; however this didn't seem to be as fleshed out as I had hoped. With this one I'm not sure if you expect me to take the lead on speaking for her and her actions or if you want to use her as a new opportunity to have a character interact with Haahqae and react to him with a unique new perspective from a dm-player sort of arrangement.
We can say that Haahqae is teaching her about the world in the downtime, though, so she can become more 'worldly' in the future.
I'm curious, though, how did you plan on having Haahqae show Ismene his new familiar? Was he actually going to tell her he was a mage, admitting he had been lying to her this whole time? Or was he just going to claim she was a pet?
Fair enough. But also consider, that surviving can be considered a goal, too, while living under a tyrannical dictatorship. Haahqae hasn't made as much progress in his own personal goals that he would like, but he's still alive (unlike Khush, Darga or Felran), he isn't struggling to make ends meet (like Arulia, Shima, Ne-Chanz or Grubnick), and he hasn't betrayed everything he believes in just to survive (like Kendra and Tulbas). So under that metric, I'd say he's quite successful so far.Haahque wrote:The journey is important; but I tend to consider the journey as a collection of adventures that pass or fail to further or accomplish minor players goals eventually working towards a major goal (or two)
Also, to Horizon and Tristen, thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it. Although if either of you have any grievances to air or advice to ask, as well, now is a good time.