[Closed] Porthca Landing [5E]

[Abrahms]

Title: Porthca Landing I: Memory of the Sea

Game: D&D 5E

Player Count: 6

Description: This chapter intends to be focused on trying to find a murderer that is currently sweeping through Porthca, the northwestern portcity of the country Okesh. The local guards have begun to ignore the case – it’s nobles being killed, but when there’s hardly any clues or leads, they’re stuck running in circles, left to just hope someone catches the murderer in the act. Other noble families are concerned – could they be next? Is it someone upset with the upperclasses? Those who work the docks and live amongst rumors say it’s revenge from the sea, come to strike on land. Is that truth, or merely superstition? Who can say? Well, hopefully a mixed group of adventurers will find an explanation.

Character Creation:

I allow published material (PHB/SCAG/Volo’s/Xanathar’s/Mordenkainen’s) as well as Mystic and Artificer. However – I have played and dealt with both those UA classes, so I’m fairly well versed in how broken they might be, so be aware I will tweak things using homebrew rules I’ve worked on with a fellow DM (especially with Mystic).

Elves and half-elves are the only races I limit in that within this world, pure-blood elves almost NEVER leave their domain, meaning half-elves are rare as well. If you still decide to go with that race, I will speak with you about some concerns that adds for your character.

When it comes to stats, I have two options for stats: you can point buy OR try your luck with the fickle Avrae. If you decide to try your luck, I allow players to roll two sets of stats. You can pick ONE of the stat blocks you end up with, but you CANNOT mix and match the rolls between the two sets. If you’re unsure what I mean, please feel free to ask.

Houserules / Game style: Ultimately this campaign should be enjoyable for the players! As it sits, I’m expecting most of the campaign to be social and exploration – Porthca is pretty dense and layered – with occasional combat.

My main table rules are as follows:

• Flanking is a thing – that works both for and against players. Need to be across from each other to count.
• I’d rather you ask to roll something than just assume you don’t need to OR roll before I let you know what to roll for.
  • EX:“I’d like to see if I can figure out anything about this room?”
    • Roll investigation for me, and let me know if you’re looking for something specific.
  • It helps keep things reasonable, and lets me know what information you’re looking for more specifically – depending on the roll there might be more or less added, but this way we both know what the intent is.

Other: My personal timezone is CST – usually hovering around even if I can’t always post. College student, but generally have time to answer questions or potentially get a post up if needed.

 

[maasnssmaamsm]

I'm interested, what do you need from me?

 

[Baba Luga]

Do you have a pace of play / posting frequency in mind?

 

[Abrahms]

Right now I'm just looking for interest -- I figure once we get enough people we can discuss things more. The plan is for the campaign moving forward to stay focused in Porthca, but some may be arriving, and some may be locals with various ties through the bustling portcity.

Pace of play is however fast people want it to be -- I don't want players to get left behind, but I intend to try and be as active as needed depending on what's happening in the campaign. At minimum I'm expecting a post a day, varying if there's establishing shots, so to speak, or dialogue currently happening.

 

[NotHaruka]

I'd also like to register an interest. I only have a few questions at the moment:

Will play begin from level 1?
Do you intend for the party to know each other before the plot starts?
As someone who's been thinking about trying a Mystic, what changes have you made to the class that I should know about?

 

[Abrahms]

Play will start at 3rd level -- intend to get subclasses sorted, and since pbp leveling is slow, 1st level can be painful.

The party has the option of knowing each other -- it's part of the offering of they could be locals, they could be arriving into town with someone. Could be siblings -- partners, what have you. There's a fair amount of dynamics on offer, whichever route players want to go, I'm more than willing to work with them to help build basic character knowledge.

When it comes to mystic, it's mostly with Telepathy when it comes to lower levels -- harder to say much else until I'd know what disciplines or Order you might go with. Telepathy is instead two way (still need LoS), can't force responses from people, and while you can attempt to send and receive mental images, it's a paired roll between Mystic and recipient. For instance, from what happened to me recently as a Mystic, I tried to look at a party member's memory to see if I could understand anything he didn't. He had to roll an int check (to represent his level of memory), and I had to roll a perception check (to try and piece together what I was even looking at). Instead of just a flat "it works", try to make it more dynamic and reactive to how such things might potentially work. Memory is a finicky thing, and reaching into another's memories can be a bit difficult to come to grips with as well.

 

[Expersprobi]

I'm in.


Edit: omg that smiley is TERRIFYING.

 

[NotHaruka]

That all sounds good to me. To be more specific, if I were to play a Mystic (since I've got a couple of character ideas rattling around) I'd be sticking strictly to Nomad disciplines for the sake of theme and simplicity, eventually moving on to Awakened disciplines on the off-chance that the characters ever reach that level. As a third level Nomad, the disciplines I'd probably go for would be Nomadic Arrow, Nomadic Mind, Nomadic Step and Third Eye - though obviously I could scrap that idea if it would cause too many headaches.

 

[Abrahms]

Nah -- I'm fine with Mystic. I dislike when people ban it -- how else is it gonna get playtested and someday made official?

With the Nomad stuff, since so much if it is either changing profs, gaining profs and so on, my only thing is I'd ask you to track somewhere 1) which skills/tools/languages you have for the day, 2) and which Focus you have active -- specially if you have the Nomadic Mind focus active, and have added skills and such from that.

 

[NotHaruka]

Perfik. In that case, if I do end up rolling this character I'll make an OOC note of what I have active at the beginning of the campaign, with updates whenever it changes in game or at the end of every long rest.
Have to log off for now, but this is getting exciting~

 

[Abrahms]

Yep! In Scalebound, I asked the Mystic to post it as an edit to his character sheet so I could check there at a glance as well.

 

[maasnssmaamsm]

I 've had a paladin character who has only been a dmpc, and I have been looking for a place to play him. I'm on basically every waking moment, except the few hours a week that I'm in class, so I can pretty much post as often as you need.

 

[Ash-6116]

If there's still space left, I'd like to join. I'm in BST and can be on pretty much every weekend consistently and every evening.

 

[Abrahms]

I've got seven people interested -- Devilish Eggs messaged me, as well as Holy Shitsnax -- so at the very least we've got a full party. I'll be getting things sorted on the Discord side on Friday hopefully -- but I'll wait till then to close this out incase anyone else wants to throw their hat in the ring! I'm not opposed to adding a few more "seats" within reason (my sunday game for awhile was 7 players, so I'm used to larger parties as it is, if I can handle them live, pbp is much more reasonable).