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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Ok. That makes a lot more sense. When you said "ethereal demon" I assumed you literally meant "a demon who is ethereal" (as in the D&D ability). A spirit makes perfect sense to me (game system I play has spirits and spirt like beings). Yeah. That's strange that in a game that has this stuff, they apparently didn't equip themselves with much to deal with them? Hmmm...
    I think its just an accident of party composition, nobody took a character who was really good at dealing with spirits and it didn't cause them enough problems that they went out of their way to correct it with items.


    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    How long does it take to do those things? I'm just confused why they didn't take this thing out in the fight? Heck. In my game, things like that are like the first things you target precisely because they take special weapons/magic to deal with. See one? Cast up your blessings/whatever, then whack it. In the middle of a combat? Even better time to do so because it's likely thinking you're pulling out that weapon to whack a physical opponent instead, so you have better odds of actually getting it with a hit (spirits like this can just sorta float away from you, and would presumably not just hang out letting you whale on them if they have a choice, right?).
    Spirits can be a bit of a bullet sponge because they use the same stat for durability and for casting, and it does take resources to be able to hit them. In this case, the demon was primarily conjuration based, and once the party abjurer put up a ward on the room to prevent summoning, it was pretty toothless and they just ignored it.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Yeah. But did they have a plan to do this without maybe being identified? Is there any issue with retaliation in this game world? My game table does these sort of strike attacks too, but we make sure to use some sort of magic to conceal ourselves and/or prevent divination type spells to figure out we did what we did, and we make sure to leave no witnesses. Why would they just not bother to do anything about this thing? Did they not see it until they were actually in the battle? Or did they notice it earlier?
    Anonymity wasn't an issue with this particular scenario.


    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And did any of them have the insight skill to detect his spell and counter it? If not, why?
    Yes. But the person who had insight, the person who could see spirits, and the person who could cast counter spell were three different people.
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  2. - Top - End - #32
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    So the PC with counter spell didn't take insight? That seems... questionable. If I'm understanding the rules here correctly. It would seem like an obvious match up, if you want to actually be able to counter spells that are being cast at you, without having to always be looking right at the person doing so at the time. I mean, the spirit demon thing apparently had those two abilities, presumably for precisely that reason.

    And yeah, I'm getting that the insight ability has other uses, but it would seem like you're gimping your counter spell if you don't have it. At least from what you have described. I'm sure they took other abilities instead, but... (yeah, totally armchair character building for a system I don't know, so take with grain of salt I suppose).

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    So the PC with counter spell didn't take insight? That seems... questionable. If I'm understanding the rules here correctly. It would seem like an obvious match up, if you want to actually be able to counter spells that are being cast at you, without having to always be looking right at the person doing so at the time. I mean, the spirit demon thing apparently had those two abilities, presumably for precisely that reason.

    And yeah, I'm getting that the insight ability has other uses, but it would seem like you're gimping your counter spell if you don't have it. At least from what you have described. I'm sure they took other abilities instead, but... (yeah, totally armchair character building for a system I don't know, so take with grain of salt I suppose).
    Kind of off topic, but I never pass up an opportunity to talk about my game.

    Generally yes, insight is good for casters.

    This party doesn't actually have a pure caster, instead they have a bunch of "half-casters" equivelent to a D&D eldritch knight, elemental-monk, rogue/warlock, and darkness domain cleric.

    None of them actually have a generic counter spell, but anyone can counter spells of their opposite element; in the case of the elemental monk, he is time focused, and can thus only counter space focused spells. Insight isn't quite as necessary for him, as he can use his powers to go back counter something after the face rather than at the moment of its casting.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    Quote Originally Posted by KillianHawkeye View Post
    Do you not just leave the map out for the entire session? Why would you roll and unroll a battle mat between each encounter?
    Because some games do go between "battle map" and "region/city/world map" depending on what's going on. One of my games is a sandboxy Drakkenheim campaign, and after every fight we move the dry-erase battlemap and get the city map back out so we can remember where we were headed, how far we are from our home base (the only place in the city we can long rest) etc.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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  5. - Top - End - #35
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    BardGuy

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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    I think you guys are over-selling this a bit.

    My world is animistic in nature, spirits are not uncommon, nor are the means of dealing with them.

    The players often underestimate spirits, and this particular party makeup is pretty vulnerable to them, but even so they are far from helpless.

    Off the top of my head they could have blessed the sniper (who has blind-fighting)'s gun and killed or driven it off, performed an exorcism, summoned a spirit of their own to battle it (this is what they ended up doing), create a ward or anti-magic shell around themselves, saturated the area with iron powder or jade dust, cast spirit sight on themselves and then battled it with their own spells, countered its counter spell, or simply let it use up all of its magic hindering them in less decisive ways before dropping the teleport rune.

    They also have a time-monk who can turn back time and a bard with a common sense retcon power, so they can't even be taken by surprise.

    Not D&D, its my own system (link in signature). Basically, targeting an ethereal being with spells (or vice versa) is slightly harder than normal casting, but still fully possible. They can also be seen by mediums and attacked by blessed weapons, but the party only has one of the former and none of the later, though they did have a wizard who can enchant people to make anyone see spirits and a cleric who can bless any weapon to allow it to attack a spirit.

    But they didn't do this, because their goal was to get in, kill their targets as quickly as possible, and get back out, and actually dealing with the demon would have interfered with that goal.

    In my system, magic can be sensed through walls by making a test using the insight skill, and this is good enough to target it with a counter-spell.

    Sums it up pretty well.

    Interesting. Well, then I guess the spirit demon thing really wouldn't have been untouchable. Just thinking of standard rules, something ethereal casting into the real world would be quite obnoxious. Even a Phase spider has to be in the real world to attack and conversely be attacked. The players in your game have ways to deal with your own version of spirits so it's more on them that they ignored it to some degree.
    Last edited by Battlebooze; 2022-11-30 at 12:42 AM.
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  6. - Top - End - #36
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    OldWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    "Putting away the map" does have implications, and I think saying "it shouldn't" misses that.

    Communication is of course, key. But, I think there's an easy solution of "don't put up the map until you've either left the location or need a different one". I think that easily solves about 95% of the problem.
    "Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"

  7. - Top - End - #37
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    "Putting away the map" does have implications, and I think saying "it shouldn't" misses that.

    Communication is of course, key. But, I think there's an easy solution of "don't put up the map until you've either left the location or need a different one". I think that easily solves about 95% of the problem.
    I do agree, but again, I don’t believe “the map” itself was put away, just the minis that were on it.
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  8. - Top - End - #38
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    OldWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    Quote Originally Posted by animorte View Post
    I do agree, but again, I don’t believe “the map” itself was put away, just the minis that were on it.
    Same principle applies. Just stick them in a corner.
    "Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"

  9. - Top - End - #39
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

    One idea that just occurred to me is to have a section just off the battle map allocated for foes that were sighted once, and have not been confirmed dead. That way foes that have fled or gone invisible or whatever there's an automatic reminder of them having been around; which also helps if people want to pursue or something. It could also work just as well for a foe that was only sighted by one player but was around at one point.

    A hypothetical situation where it could be helpful: a foe retreats out of sight. If you just remove hte mini entirely, people might think they fled and will never come back and were put away to save space/time/effort. But if you leave the mini in a once-seen box, then the foe going invisible and trying to sneak back into the fight could be done without upsetting people so much.

    It also means at the end of a battle, you simply ask the party what, if anything, they want to do about the foes in the once seen box. Or hopefully you won't even need to remind them, they just look at it and think on their own.
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