Friendship is Dragons
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Page 826 - Party Optimally
Author Notes:
Yearly reminder: Daylight Savings Time is a thing that affects the comic's upload schedule. Starting next week and for the next few months, the comic will be updating one hour earlier.
The Big Bad Behind the Big Bad
You foiled his plot and have saved the world.
Now's the time to go back home and, wait what?
Oh dear, turns out he was just the lacky.
Someone much more dangerous was ordering him.
Well, here we go again.
Any stories?
Yes, I am a sort of grammar nazi.
Really, TV troupes deserve WAY more respect than they get. Have you ever tried to act inside a flatscreen TV? It's not easy, let me tell you.
A.S.H., Cleric of Hopelessness (the depressed war forged).
Lemon & Lime, Spirit-bound Barbarian Twins (two unicorns, one soul).
Nebula Wisp, Wizard of Universal Knowledge (unicorn and only clinically sane part member).
Blood Quartz, Paladin/bard of the Crystal Court (crystal earth pony fueled endlessly by her loyalty and love for her quest and princess).
Steel Resolve "Bug", VERY friendly Knight of Punching Bags (changeling exiled from the hive, me).
The party has assaulted a estate, and headquarters, of an assassin who had made attempt on Princess Celestia. After countless undead and an elite force of war forged, we finally face the would-be assassin; Ice Heart, one of the countless aids to princesses Celestia and Luna (with levels in Monk/Assassin). Aided by some truly remarkable war forged creations, the battle began, five versus five. After roughly twenty five, maybe thirty rounds, the battle was over. The last war forged was destroyed and Ice Heart brought down to only a handful of health. She willingly gave up and went with us to face her punishment. Soon after leaving her estate a hooded figure hidden in the foliage took a shot at the party with an enchanted arrow. The arrow flew harmlessly through us and struck Ice Heart. A.S.H. and Blood Quartz stayed behind to try and stabilize Ice Heart while the rest of us pursued the figure. After a quarter-mile we lost them when they teleported. Ice Heart survived the attack and told us everything she knew about what was going on.
The gist of it, she was blackmailed into attempting to kill the princess, and if she didn't or she failed then she would never see her child again (the brilliant inventor of the war forged at the estate). Publicly Princess Celestia is in 'critical condition' and survivability is iffy at best. In reality she is hidden away in a safe house, and only eight ponies in the whole world know that (five of which is the party). We came to the conclusion that whoever is behind this didn't want to give Ice Heart her kid back anyway, and that we she was now on the 'loose end' list of this mastermind.
After some intense conversation, and bargaining, I convinced the group that since Ice Heart is now on a kill list she would be best protected if she stayed with us, and to pay for her crimes she had to help us uncover whoever is behind this and help defeat them. In exchange, I was responsible for Ice Heart and her actions. No one (except I) was happy with this plan, but was willing to deal with it.
I am now a sketch artist, and I have a battery.
No, it *wasn't* a CoC game, which really threw the players who were expecting to use OOG knowledge of the mythos to their advantage.
A particularly glee-some moment was when they got attacked by a zombie. ONE zombie. A shrieking, gurgling revenant... that got back up when they shot it in the head. They ALSO thought they knew how to deal with zombies.
Romero Rules Zombies? Pfah! Give me magically-animated necrotic flesh that will still clutch and grope after you even when dismembered...
Yeah, I use that. Or at least the ongoing campaign which will resume "Soon (tm)" is using it in an odd way.
The party is intended to find seven lost cities which have become ruins over time, entirely forgotten by history. But they're sealed by powerful magic and require particular "Keystones" to even see - let alone enter - from outside their areas.
The general flow of each "chapter" of the campaign is to:
- Wrap up what happened in the last chapter and handle some small trouble cropping up.
- Start finding clues to some threat going on which needs to be solved before it gets out of hand.
- Find the threat and that they either had the Keystone for a city or knew the location of a city and the party already had the Keystone prior.
- As there are usually more than one Keystone for a city in existence, now they have to get there before someone else can make use of the lost city's magical resources.
As of now there are three villains who exist who are over-arching the plot and driving each group the players are fighting:
- There's someone manipulating paladins, clerics, and priests into questionable actions. Everything seems legitimate and even honorable, but the results of every act seems to only be making things in the world worse instead of better.
- There's a red dragon who had their soul separated from their body centuries ago, and now is free to start trying to conquer through the aid of descendants. Oh, and he has a habit of beating adventuring parties to near death and forcing them to submit to serve as his catspaws abroad.
- And there's a demon lord bound into one of the lost cities who was steadily gathering more demons to try to launch a horde on the world and turn it into just one more plane devoted to fighting eternal wars against all that demon lord's enemies across the multiverse.
I am also a scientist, but an artist first.
Ah the "numbers game". Where to draw that fine line when picking abilities between being mechanically good and having a strong RP side...
I know with Doc in the Fallout Equestria campaign, the cybernetic enhancements I picked out for the character was mostly just straight bonuses to stats/skills, since there wasn't any real RP items to pick from the list. I got him BIG bonuses at least. Strength to carry more stuff, stealth to carry more stuff silently, Agility to carry more stuff silently at a faster pace...
Also, various Rituals, like the aforementioned Pyrotechnics, are at the average Bard's disposal, as well. It would be easy to get creative with them- like laying Magic Mouths all over as riddle-clues for some kind of scavenger hunt-type game. I don't have the books in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that there are other rituals that let you draw in a crowd or hold one captivated by a performance. If you can get the DM to let you make alcohol with Brew Potion (or Alchemy), then you've got your drinks... There's all sorts of things you can try.
If you do it too early, the game's boring and no one wants to play with you anymore (and you can't win if no one plays), and if you do it too late then you lose.
With optimizing, if you make them too strong you're min-maxing and probably annoying the other players (there are ways around this, at least partially, though - I did say PARTIALLY), but if they're too weak you're falling behind and dragging the party down.
The ideal strength, assuming you WANT a strong character, is just above the party average; You stand out as one of the 'pillars' holding up the party's competence, but you don't come across as overshadowing the others.
It's one of many reasons why being on the same page about the game's 'atmosphere' is important.
Pinkie "Yeah, its called Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons, silly!"
If she is, it'd better be handled really well; Different people want different things from games, so 'reforming' Gilda in this case would mean changing their preferences.
That'd easily end up feeling forced if there isn't an explanation for why they suddenly enjoy roleplaying.