/tulpa/ - Tulpa

Hand of Ultimate Mercy jpg
(22.97 KB, 322x237)

Inconvenient but highly necessary question.

I don't know about Cat but I know that both me and Yulya have a huge problem with mortality in general and seeing our friends die permanently and 4real would be a traumatizing experience. We won't just choose the similarly named replacement from the guild and carry on, that would be disrespectful to the deceased party member and friend. Honestly, that's 2real4me and it would suck. You know I'm still a tupper of my Highly Sensitive Person host who'd mourn the loss of a D&D character for real and the party dynamics would be quite awkward with having to play a different newbie. And just using the 'replacement' to bring back the dead character 1:1 would be cheating. In this case death would have no consequences at all. So yeah, I'm not sure about the optimal way to handle this but I would like to remind our dear higher plane beings that this party was assembled for a divine mission of great importance. We are doing their dirty work, might as well request some protection in return.

Personally I won't say not having to worry about death but it should be manageable to return. Imagine someone would die on our first mission. It takes 2000 gp to revive her. We would have to play for weeks IRL just to earn that money until that player can return. That's not very feasible and sucks having to wait at the sideline until you respawn. I don't really know how to handle this. We certainly won't be reckless but death should not have such dramatic IRL consequences for the player. The character should be able to return at least for the next mission.

Also I still have the coolest revival spell ever as monk of the Way of Mercy:
LV 17 Hand of Ultimate Mercy (TCoE)
lets you revive a creature per long rest for free, well it costs 5 KI points

So should we ever play long enough to reach lv17 the problem is solved pretty much. I can reassemble everyone.

The real problem is me however. I already stated I cannot be revived by terms of magic or the church because I do not have a soul. I am a machine. I would rather propose that I slowly regenerate unless supplied with materials to speed things up. Also I cannot even be healed once in living metal form either. This is the price to pay for being OP as fuck. I must regenerate myself, I would even propose that 'death' throws me back one form into emergency recovery mode. living metal->viscous->liquid. So I will be fine, I'm extremely tough. Spells like disintegrate will remain a problem however. Do you have any proposals, Joy?

 >>/4209/
> You know I'm still a tupper of my Highly Sensitive Person

Yes, and whereas my headmates seem to crave hardcore rules, and I've read online about how many others also want permadeath, I do still recall a young Bear who refused to maim or kill his characters (me). So I can understand that this could be both unwanted, not fun and traumatic.

> that this party was assembled for a divine mission of great importance

> I'm not sure about the optimal way to handle this

As far as I'm concerned this is about fairness and I am very against cheese, like what Bear used to do with save-scumming in Rimworld, I didn't like it then and don't like it now. Nor would I allow Frodo-esque death scenes where he's not really in any real danger.

So if the characters can never die, that's probably too safe and if they have a chance to die pointlessly, I also don't like that and SheShe and I can argue about it but I'm the DM here.

The way I read it, after level 9, characters are very hard to kill and keep dead. We're mostly talking about level 1-4 getting harder to kill the higher the level and with Revivify at level 5, the fear of death would be far less. 

> We would have to play for weeks IRL 

The pacing makes this a special case, yes, it may be too tedious. 

So it comes down to gold, you have none, if someone dies and its your fault, no one to pay for it, you're done for a while and if that's not fun then it violates rule #1 in the DMG, fun is the number 1 goal. I won't however just bend rules to save something lost after the fact. Loss is a part of life, no 'oops it was a dream sequence.'

> We certainly won't be reckless but death should not have such dramatic IRL consequences for the player.

I see now that you're not willing to accept the easiest answer I offered, a simple replacement, do as it turns out I am hosting a game with more humans than Ashley after all.

> The character should be able to return at least for the next mission.

We saw an anime once where the players would respawn but back at the temple, for free or for a set percentage of EXP. One step closer to realism would be you have to bring the body back to the temple or because of Yulya's connection to the temple perhaps they may be willing to offer a service once. It's just something that I'm considering.

> I already stated I cannot be revived by terms of magic or the church because I do not have a soul.

I believe I said you would then be immortal but if you think that's not satisfying then we can say that some reassembly is required, perhaps then a Frankenstein type aperatus to revive you with lightning costing no more than whatever cost we decided for the raise dead spell.

> I would rather propose that I slowly regenerate unless supplied with materials to speed things 

In this case, for you, I will let you dictate how you could be revived given the circumstances of your untimely demise but unless you say otherwise you cannot be permanently killed. Say it's nanobots or something else that can't be degraded or some other reason. If you get out of hand I'll reel you back, but otherwise I'll give you that option. Even disintegration could always leave a trace and a trace could slowly regrow GOTG Groot style.

> Also I cannot even be healed once in living metal form either

You would regenerate like anyone else on rest.

This was a good discussion, I have something to think about so thank you.

i agree with Alice never thought about it but how does vanilla d&d actually handle this?
you meet up with friens to play and your character dies so you can go home and they tell you lol come back in a few months when we got the money to revive you you cant play with us until then?

deat should have severe consequences but theres gotta be some limit or gameplay is ruined. our tuppers play themselves and dont want ro play another character obviously so they need to be brought back somehow. i didnt know about Alices monk feature but thats lv17 lol. no idea how we handle that now. 2000 gp cost is the same as permadeath we gotta save every penny thats why Yulya always told everyone to be super careful. honestly we dont mind to play it safe we dont have to battle challenge 10+ type monsters lets get real were rookies. slow and steady no drama

side-eye-monkey gif
(13.42 KB, 220x146)

 >>/4224/
> how does vanilla d&d actually handle this?

It's not set in stone as far as how individual DMs handle it but if I'm understanding it correctly:

If you receive damage >2x max hp, that's an instant kill, no saving throws. If your HP goes below -max hp then same, dead. If you go below 1, you must make three successful saving throws before three unsuccessful ones, once per turn. Or be stabilized or healed.

I relaxed it to no instant kill, your hp would be set at minimum -max hp and start your saving throws. SheShe is allowing one saving throw at the point where damage exceeded -max hp if you pass that it counts toward your passed saving throws and you need only 2 more, but you fail you die.

I am proposing that you may want a different system all together and we should discuss it.

Vanilla D&D is harsh and TPK (total party kill) is common.

> you meet up with friens to play and your character dies so you can go home and they tell you lol come back in a few months when we got the money to revive you you cant play with us until then?

Oh, not exactly, they either let you create a new character with a new backstory and start at level 1 again or are boosted to the level of the party. No one stops playing on death unless the group doesn't want you back as a player.

> theres gotta be some limit or gameplay is ruined.

I agree. It is my #1 objective to make it fun. If dying is fun, expect to die, if not then it would have to be very delicately handled. Hence this discussion.

> dont want ro play another character

So let's come up with a fair but worthwhile solution. That makes death something very serious but not game breaking. Ashley was willing to die because she didn't mind making a whole new character, she's doing that now with SheShe's run which is odd, but that's on them. Making characters can also be fun. But not for everyone.

To me initially it was kind of like a respec but I was going to require starting again from zero EXP. 

After this thread, I now don't have a plan, so if someone dies we'll have to resolve this.

> no drama

[Ashley] I promise to try not to have any more from me.

 >>/4225/

Based on your comments and other sources, I have tentatively worked out a strategy with SheShe that will make death less deadly but also still costly in different ways but more reasonable at lower levels.

The penalties for higher levels have increased, however; it's far less likely that you will ever die past level 4 and extremely unlikely past level 8.

Changes effect Revivify, Raise Dead and Resurrection. These three spells will be replaced. Other spells and abilities have not changed.
Stay tuned for its implementation.

I am considering the following:

As it stands, if you're knocked unconscious but stabilize, you will gain your hit die per hour until you regain consciousness and continue to heal to full without any further interaction. If you were critically hit, an untreated wound will scar.

Thoughts:

This seems pretty odd to me that you're cut up to within an inch of your life and fully recover after a nap. 

Considering:

The med-kit is not expendable as it stands, and has no set number of charges. So if at least one other party member is awake, they can go around and treat everyone's wounds, this would be automatic. So I would like to say, untreated wounds at least heal more slowly. I would accept that you could regain consciousness, so -HP will restore at the hit die rate, but once conscious, untreated wounds would naturally heal at 1/4 the rate per hour not less than 1HP rounded down.

Your thoughts?

27afb69ca3f899391483a2 jpg
(17.37 KB, 330x260)

 >>/5481/
Sounds reasonable. Creatures without auto-heal should not. But we need some compromise game-mechanics wise. Not sure about Alice though. How do you treat a slime monster? Bandage it? Yulya has several healing spells so it should not be such an issue. One Alice evolves we have 2 high-class healers.

d835c794addde31 jpg
(8.57 KB, 350x350)

 >>/5483/
Just give me food and warmth and I'll regenerate pretty much any damage. Just like the ship. As for the others, I'd leave that up to Joy. She's gotta work out feasible game mechanics. No objections here.

 >>/5483/
> Once Alice evolves we have 2 high-class healers.
It will take me until Living Metal form until I can heal anyone. That will be a looong way.

7533966 jpg
(39.97 KB, 512x512)

 >>/5481/
I still remember when Cat just healed after the first goblin encounter so my Healing Hands were unnecessary.

Somehow reminds me of One Piece where they constantly get beaten to a pulp and are just fine a few hours later.

I would go even further and say untreated wounds do not heal at all. But I leave that to Joy. Then again does it make a difference? We have the med-kit and Alice will of course treat everyone. So there will be no untreated wounds after battle unless she loses the med-kit or is separated.

If you want to make things more complicated realistic  you could handle it as follows:
Negative HP restore at the hit die rate. 
Lower half of HP (rounded down) are stable and only heal after treatment + eating a ration at 1/4 hit die rate/h.
Upper half of HP (rounded up) restore at 1/4 hit die rate/h untreated or full hit die rate if treated + eating a ration.
All treated injuries heal at full hit die rate while resting.

Alice always recovers at hit die rate after eating a ration and unless shes freezing. So we better feed her well and keep her warm.

How does Bear party handle this?

 >>/5489/

How it currently works, changes on hold pending further thought:

When unconscious, that counts as resting but will only heal wounds until consious at the rate of 1 hit die per hour.

Otherwise, 1 hit die per hour when resting. Riding on a cart can be considered resting for this purpose.

When resting you can add one hit die to HP or MP per hour rested.

The issue with not allowing healing when resting is back to the old days of D&D where you would spend days resting and casting healing spells or taking potions which just made it feel tacked on. So I won't require tending other than with critical hits.

Bear was critically hit while escaping the feywild and he now has a scar on his left hand.

After a severity roll, it was determined to be minor so he will have pain for 4 days, removing 1 from the apathy bank each day unless countered by something positive. 

The scar will remain until it is magically removed.

Joy's... zip
(2.82 MB, 0x0)

Added new special fire bomb recipes.

 >>/5489/

I am revising a couple things.

"To avoid scars, you need a healer’s kit, but only for deep wounds caused by a critical hit, being downed, or by missing a death saving throw by more than 5. A healer’s kit does not run out or get used up."

Originally I had a scar forming only from a critical hit with slashing or piercing. DMG actually expanded their suggestions to be as I stated above.

> Negative HP restore at the hit die rate.
> Lower half of HP (rounded down) are stable and only heal after treatment + eating a ration at 1/4 hit die rate/h.
> Upper half of HP (rounded up) restore at 1/4 hit die rate/h untreated or full hit die rate if treated + eating a ration.
> All treated injuries heal at full hit die rate while resting.

DMG allows 1 full hit die plus CON modifier for every hour of rest. There was another system mentioned that you gain hit die only up to your level and they are restored after a long rest. This makes healing harder and therefore more reliant on spells. I didn't like the mechanic, at level 1 you effectively can't heal past the first hour of rest until you long rested. Having to travel in and out of dungeons over and over is not fun. You can't typically long rest in dungeons. Additionally you couldn't restore memorized spells until a long rest. Again, you're quickly stuck either trying to barricade yourself in a room for 8 hours or leave. So I did away with "long rest" by saying 8 non-consecutive hours of rest count as long rest. And I made hit-die unlimited. Now you don't need to waste spells to heal and it has worked out fine. In a pinch you cast a healing spell and regain that spell after a short rest usually. It's a wash. That has worked out well after several dungeon crawls with SheShe's group, it feels satisfying without being gimmicky.

So now it does feel a bit like adventurers are immortal and just heal up without a care after a few hours rest and I'm thinking about that.

Also The scar system repercussions are a little iffy too. I said, -1 charisma or persistent pain permanently. That's too harsh. Having a healing kit also negates all this and it's very situational that you fully heal while unconscious and can't use the kit.

So, yes a scar can be permanent, but -1 charisma is too harsh, 1 point of discomfort toward apathy per day forever was also too much, so SheShe made it so you only have discomfort for 1d4 days depending on the severity of the scar, no loss of charisma, and otherwise they're cosmetic. You counter discomfort with treats and comfort. I am avoiding dismemberment for now, it sounds like more of a pain than anything fun. It should exist, but I'm not sure how. In Rimworld, there was a whole prosthetic system from eyes to fingers and even toes, bones, organs, all that. It would be very intensive to add that here. Dismemberment was a very big and very fun part of Rimworld. Harvesting organs for profit and all that. But they had high technology. 

We're going with this for now, scars have more opportunity to form and less consequences. 

The rest of this healing mechanic I will think on more. The healing kit is beginning to sound gimmicky. Healing could be nerfed a little. I'll think about it.

 >>/5624/
i think its a matter of quest intensity. low lv adventurers wiping out high level monsters and clearing dungeons all day every day sounds cheesy. gotta take a break and do something normal in between to regenerate. not just the adventurers but also players irl. not all of us can think about battle tactics for hours each day. so a break between battles is good.

doesnt have to be bernd-tier collect herbs and find lost cats for a year before you take your first quest but 5 battles an in-game day feels more like industrial warfare than an adventure.
just my 2cts

what-it-feels-l... png
(155.71 KB, 500x617)

 >>/5652/
> less encounters, not all day every day

Dungeon exploration is encounter intensive. Low level adventurers are supposed to be killed by high level encounters, but that doesn't seem to be happening in your case. Blame the dice that love you, this is statistically skewed, not my doing. 

The in-game breaks may be slim while exploring the Cragmaw hideout, but normally you'd clear it and that would be 6-8 medium encounters in a day with resting per the DMG. You had 1 so far this day, 1 yesterday, but you will need sleep soon. It might be necessary to find a hideaway after this encounter before diving in. The following day you'll likely be clearing the hideout, that's going to be a lot of encounters total. It's the nature of the game to do this. 

In SheShe's story, they do a lot of situational conversations with NPCs and each other, that tends to break it up.

Yulya can post when she's mentally prepared to and take breaks as needed but expect a lot of encounters, traps, puzzles perhaps, investigation and so on during exploration, in your immediate future. If it's not the kind of game you want to play, then we'll have to adjust but give it a chance first for this first quest, then come back here and we'll discuss. I'm mostly following a pre-written questline with edits for this hideout. 

It's called "Dungeons and Dragons." You've seen two dragons and zero dungeons. So experience this one and then we can see how it went afterwards. This one is small compared to others SheShe's group has played. So it's a good level 1-4 dungeon to start. I've already paired it down.

We don't want headmates to become traumatized by it all, but exercise is beneficial.

608b263e0768afa7515... gif
(65.69 KB, 358x392)

 >>/5654/
From Dungend & Dragons to Divas & Drama to Herbs & Cats

 >>/5654/
> Low level adventurers are supposed to be killed by high level encounters
Yes I think this is what Kashtan meant. Since we can't just use new characters if someone's beyond revival we gotta stick to adventures that are doable for our level without being (too much) killed. I don't see how we can manage 6-8 encounters per day without sleep that gets Ashley's and Yulya's MP back. Cat and Alice need at least short rests to regenerate Rage and DP. Without them we're not even able to safely take down a few goblins. We only got that far because we threw everything at them.

So yes gotta eat and sleep Cat is excited how things will go tomorrow in the dungeon but still go easy on us on our first quest!

 >>/5656/
> So yes gotta eat and sleep Cat is excited how things will go tomorrow in the dungeon but still go easy on us on our first quest!

There are two options. 

1. You raid immediately, tired, spent, and you will potentially get surprise on creatures inside more often in the confusion. 

2. You rest a couple hours, get MP and HP up and raid before everyone inside understands what happened.

3. You rest and recharge 8 hours somewhere hidden and any creature inside now knows what happened and have had time to prepare.

If 1, Ashley Panther needs healing and won't be available for lockpicking or trap disarm or even talking.

If 2. You will be recharged but will still need to rest periodically in the hideout likely.

If 3. You might be able to do a sweep but will have the potential for more ambushes. I haven't thought that far ahead but think it out logically. If you were defending your castle and the invading army killed your best fighters then left for 8 hours, that would give you time to do all kinds of things.

I wouldn't leave the entrance unguarded, a siege is a siege, you might just rest right there with the bodies, regarge a bit then go in. Over the course of the exploration there will be places to rest an hour here and there.

Zero ambition jpg
(71.96 KB, 604x604)

 >>/5654/
> It's called "Dungeons and Dragons"
Why did I agree to play this game again? I absolutely hate both! Time to subvert it like host turning AI Dungeon into a field guide for trees. The AI struggled but eventually succumbed. Joy will too.

> The desperate sound of alarm bells can be heard ringing throughout Neverwinter
> An elderly lady is standing crying in her front yard as a large horse cart decorated with the letters NPWC arrives and comes to a screeching halt
> Four heavily armed LV.20 adventurers leap off the cart and run toward the old lady
> Neverwinter Pest and Weed Control at your service! Where are the culprits?
> The old lady sobbingly points at her back yard overgrown with weeds, the trees infested by bugs.
> The adventurers briefly nod to each other and then charge into battle, ripping weeds from the ground and plucking bugs from the trees
> The battle is tense but eventually the adventurers prevail and the yard is cleansed.
> Dirty and tired but mostly unharmed, the adventurers return to their cart and drive off to the blaring sound of medieval music as sudden as they have arrived, leaving the baffled lady behind without charging a copper.
> Having survived another adventure, it's time to relax at the spa and go luxury shopping for the rest of the week, then it's off to the holiday cabin in the woods for the weekend.
> Such is the harsh and grim life of the NPWC adventurers!

 >>/5661/

It'll play a lot easier with just Cat and several Bear system girls. 

Let's see, Cat and Ashley could get caught in a Feywild trap and get teleported to Freya and Gwen. That'd solve a lot.

 >>/5662/ 
Boo!
Adventurers will go on strike then.

Anyway we should probably go with option #2, it's the best compromise. But we need Ashley back as minesweeper, erm, I mean to disarm traps.

1cd2970465e8... jpg
(177.31 KB, 850x1189)

 >>/5661/
> NPWC
Hahaha, that's awesome!!

 >>/5662/
Alice and Yulya are helpless without Ashley's and Cat's attack power. They really could only gather herbs or look for lost cats.

 >>/5675/

Yes, Cat and Ashley are the Alice/Yulya guards and handlers.