Notes on Session 181

Here are some followup notes on DF Session 181.

- the changes to Higher Purpose, as I mentioned, were good ones. The per-die bonus to damage made a significant jump. Instead of holy warrior just parrying really well against evil, Sigur was able to be a significant damage engine.

- I clarified that using knowledge skills to figure things out about foes - Hidden Lore, etc. - is a Concentrate action. It's not a freebie.

- Turns out that Durinn's player made a spell casting time mistake. He threw a Great Healing spell in combat, which, with a base 1 minute casting time, is not a thing. It's easily fixed, though, because this is an ongoing fight. We'll change Sigur from fully healed to just getting 8 HP back for Major Healing, and restore the difference in FP/energy used by Durinn.

One player suggested that, well, it must just have been a miracle. Yeah, maybe, if the fight was over. But it's ongoing and fixable.

This does poke yet another hole in my policy of letting players resolve their own actions without much oversight by me. We had a scout who didn't know the rolls needed for Heroic Archer, a spell miscast due to a big error in casting time, and I need to check out Stop Bleeding again to see if it was resolved as intended, too. I suspect there is a loophole in there that might need closing.

I'm fine with trusting my players but if people just end up kinda winging and going off of inaccurate memories of their abilities, someone needs to check it and that will fall to me. I'd been hoping not but I think I need to drop "No rules lookups" and double-check everything again for a while. Cast a spell? I'll check the casting time. Use a move? I'll go read the move. I'm not sure I have much choice . . . and leaving this one as a miracle that cannot be explained is just rewarding rules errors and punishing rules adherence. That's just not fun for me - why have the rules in the first place?

And it's worth noting that my players generally vote in favor of more detailed, not less abstract, rules. So it's not a secret push to make everything more abstract. It's just errors.

- I need to have firmer times down for some actions. In a multi-encounter dungeon where the PCs loot each foe as they go, times for things like stripping armor, skinning monsters, tying off looted weapons to carry them without a DX penalty for loose gear, etc. are useful and important. We can't just say, "It's done in non-combat time." Even then, people with a mix of 2, 5, and 10 minute FP recovery times and multiple energy sources coming back means that "It takes a couple minutes" is not helpful. Even "It takes 4-5 minutes" is the difference between a few FP points of recovery. Suddenly, a Vancian magic system makes so much sense for this kind of game.

- Why are character point totals approximate?

My GCA 4 died, and reinstalling it isn't working. I just can't modify equipment or advantages or anything without a crash. I should upgrade to GCA5, but it's not a simple task to import the PCs. It seems like I'll need to rebuild them from from scratch.

Meanwhile, almost all of my players use GCS. One or two still use GCA4. So I either need to upgrade to GCA5 and rebuild everyone, or swap to GCS and rebuild the GCA4 guys, or give up having an authoritative copy of any PC. I went with the last. I just don't have the interest in spending the little mental energy I have to get on top of this. I'll just have to trust my players to make sure they do their guys right. Considering the rules thing above, I'm not sure this is a great idea, but it's all I have time for.

- Oh, yeah, we're keeping the new guy. He was pretty good.