The Schism: A 13th Age RP Campaign

Hey Birb, I think Thursday would work better for me after all. I want to have some time to come up with different enemies, instead of mostly winging it like I did with GX last night.

Sorry this took me so long, guys. Here's the stuff you got from Durgan.

Staff of the Land(Epic Tier Magic Item, can only be used by a Dwarf): +3 Attack/Damage. Cleric spells and abilities recharge one step lower whenever you are near mountains or underground. Daily abilities become Recharge 16+, Recharge 16+ becomes 11+, 11+ becomes 6+, and 6+ becomes At-Will. This counts for Cleric Talents such as Domains as well. Once per battle, as a Standard Action as long as you are touching solid ground, you can summon the spirits of the land to help you stand strong against any foe, transforming you into the embodiment of the mountains. For the remainder of the battle, or until you dismiss the ability with a Quick Action, you are rooted to the ground and cannot move or be moved(Even by spells and abilities) and you gain a +4 bonus to your AC and PD and Resist All Damage 12+. In addition, as long as the effect lasts, nearby enemies must target you and cannot target any of your allies.

Quirk: You hear the calling of the wild and prefer nature. Sometimes the land speaks to you and tells you secrets. The bustling of towns and cities is noisy and distracting to you.

Amulet of Dwarven Sealing(Unique Magic Item, can only be attuned to by a Cleric or Paladin): This unique dwarven-made amulet seems to be modeled after the artifacts used by the Gold Paladins to seal away demons, but has become unique unto itself. It is likely the only one of its kind in the world and utterly invaluable.

+3 Recoveries. Whenever you roll a recovery, you can reroll all Nat 1s and Nat 2s and take the higher result. Ritual Spell checks are one tier easier to pass, and whenever you successfully cast a Ritual Spell, it is significantly more powerful. The amulet wards against evil; Once per battle, any attack or ability used against you by a creature of Greater, Lesser, or Minor Evil must first pass a normal save(11+). On a failure, the attack or ability is rendered harmless and has no effect.

Quirk: Relentlessly seeks to protect people from evil, in whatever form it takes.

Robes of the Ancestors(Epic Tier Magic Item): +3 to all defenses. Whenever you are near a place that has some strong special tie to your ancestors, you grow stronger and fight longer. You gain a +1 bonus to all your attacks, which increases to +2 when the E-Die reaches 3, and +3 when the E-Die reaches 6. When the E-Die is 4+, you can roll a free Recovery once per round as a Free Action, as the spirits of your Ancestors swirl around you and grant you their strength.

Quirk: You hear the memories and voices of the past, brief flashes and glimpses that lead you to the ruins and secrets of yesteryear.

Special: If you do something that horrendously offends your Ancestors in some way, these Robes will go silent and lose all of their bonuses until you make amends at the next full heal-up. Usually this consists of meditating and asking your ancestors for forgiveness, though for greater offenses your ancestors may have a task for you to undertake in order to win back their approval.

20. I could have sworn you said 22.

So, cool, it's a thing she can do. But probably not a thing she should do.

Can she weild Soul Edge yet?

Alright, if we're going to be doing Seven Stars Temple next, let's talk about who we do and don't want to take.

First, Neo drafted the battles a while back. As such, they were designed with the full standard party in mind, plus 1 recruitable character we bring with us, and an NPC from the temple. Essentially, seven characters.

Unless Misty gets a lot of time soon, we're probably still going to be doing a considerable portion of this without having Karth there. Neo has also said that Iddy will be taking a bit of time after her quest, and will be back at the end of the temple questline. So, we'll effectively be down two of the six it was designed for. Let's talk about any combination of three characters we'd like to bring along, so we don't get rofl stomped by encounters designed for a much larger party.

We can rule out some now. Crow's already said Nyl won't be tagging along. Edea and Cullen are too busy for this right now. Ninnian just left, utterly overwhelmed. I don't know of or remember anyone else that might belong on this list.

So, that still leaves most of our allies.

Selene
Ryner
Bast
Violet
Rajaion
Raven

We'll let Neo give us the objective overview of how each of them would work out. So, let talk about our preferences.

I think we're all pretty cool with the idea of bringing Selene. I have no issues with that in or out of character.

Ryner seems a bit random to pick, but the party did get along with him well, so that- and having to introduce him to everything- is as far as my complaints go.

If Ryner seemed slightly random, Bast seems about 10x more so. I don't remember her fighting super well, but she seems to be less powerful than Raj, but more powerful the the others on the list. Not sure how we'd even go about inviting Bast, and Karth seems to be the only one she felt closer to.

Violet. If we try to bring Violet, expect angry resistance from Seren. Out of character, I don't have any big reasons not to bring her. She's probably the least in the know person on the list, so there's a substantial amount of really hard to swallow information we'd have to tell her..

Raj is cool. Kinda OP, but given how Neo has glowed about the idea of us bringing him, I'm going to go out on a limb and say he'd be very useful in the temple, without necessarily trivializing things. Already knows what's going on, so +1.

Raven is partially filled in and hasn't taken any of this cosmis level news badly in the past. Catching her up on what has happened would go smoothly. I'd be nice to have a chance to bring her along again, though this is extreme bias on my part. Her summons are a utility no one else on the list can match, though you'd sacrifice a decent amount of potential damage versus bringing a hard hitting ally. Probably the biggest advantage here is that Neo wouldn't be controlling all enemies and 5 PCs each battle by the end of the quest.

It's probably no surprise that my current 3 picks are Selene, Raj, and Raven.

But how do you guys feel?

I don't particularly want to spend my whole break going into detail right now, but I will speak on some things.

SST is designed in a series of stages. Throughout the questline, which is medium sized, the party will use SST as their base and journey to several mountain villages to deal with issues for story reasons. You will have 1-3 normal encounters and a boss in each village. The normal encounters will be interesting, but not particularly tough. The village bosses will all be large creatures of similar size and strength as Ukanlos, however.

The biggest thing to note are the two final bosses. The difficulty jump for them is extreme. I'm talking FGO Camelot jump. There will be no holds barred, player deaths will be active, and if you don't take them seriously, it could very easily end up with a TPK. I haven't designed these bosses to be fair. I've designed them as "Oh f***" moments which will require a full party, strategy, and a crap ton of items/totems. And your most powerful totems, like the Tarrasque, will be unusable for these fights.

Raj will be tremendously helpful, but he will neither trivialize things nor is he absolutely essential. He's only there if you want to make things easier on yourselves and get the special dialogue he has.

Battles from here on out are going to get a lot more stressful. You're going to come up against enemies with nasty specials that let them edit the E-Die, change terrain, constantly intercept you, switch places across the battlefield, seal party members away for whole rounds, have Last Gasp attacks, and a lot more.

I strongly encourage you to think of it this way: You've completed the America Singularity, and now you're in Camelot and every boss is going to screw you up if you aren't prepared.

So, just to help myself out here:
Seren, Warin and Aeva will be our base party.

Raven or Nyl would be nice to have as well, if they can come with. I'd be quite happy to have Raven back. Then we'll have Idoun coming in at the last minute. So with that said, and between those factors and totems, I think that strength isn't our highest priority. As long as we are cautious, that is. That said, I'll rank who I want from least to most, based purely on potential I think they bring to the RP.

Ryner - as much as I love our dragon canon bro, our characters have no reason to miss him already, and he has no connections to the situation that we know of.

Bast - As I said -- we could get used to having a Druid. And besides that, we are aware of ominous primal and natural activity going on lately. We may want the opportunity to pick her brain on that.

Selene - She's been with us for a long time, but there's no denying she's a good ally and someone who fits well in the story. That said, I would like to bring someone else sooner rather than later. For the seven Stars temple, though, I am happy to wait.

Rajaion - Neo has implied that Raj has a lot of knowledge about the place, and as the founder of the black Fang his skills would be very useful to us. He's also someone we've recently gotten into terms with as a party, so it's as good an opportunity as ever to bring him along. I also find him pretty likeable so far (although Xavier is indeed the better dad.)

Violet - Odd favourite, maybe, and Warin's not really gonna push for it. Let alone past Seren. But that said, I am pretty intrigued about why her mother is relevant here and what revelations that in particular could bring. I also don't mind the idea of catching her up.

If Raven or Nyl aren't a +1, then I would prioritise Raven. Her skills as a summoner does give us an extra body anyway. However, with either her or Nyl, I think we can afford to bring whoever.

So we can probably pretty safely say we're bringing Selene and Raven.

If Nyl is an option, I'd be happy to keep Nyl with us, but that's your call, Birb. If you'd like that, it seems that's the party formation that everyone would enjoy and not have problems with.

I will say, since Cheese does make a good point about Violet, don't rule her out entirely. Just think of how to convince Seren it's a good enough idea.

...Or maybe don't, since Neo ninja'd me. The potential impacts on Violet make me as a player more cautious, but at least that's not anything to change Seren's perspective.

Hmmm... As much as Raj would be helpful, if Selene is so strongly recommended and since Crow seems for her while GX seems OK with whatever...

I'd say my top 3 party arrangements:

Seren/Warin/Aeva/Raven/Selene
Seren/Warin/Aeva/Selene/Bast
Seren/Warin/Aeva/Selene/Violet

Nyl or no Nyl up to Crow entirely as a sixth, but I would like to avoid doubling up on NPC allies unless it's with Selene as we have been for a while now for story reasons. Raven could still come along regardless as well, but I don't imagine we're going out of our way for her if we're already stopping to get Bast, for example.