Prefab Character Sheets Ready

@Rory: Well, I agree that'd be a silly talent to take if you were fighting with, say, your bare claws.

Yes, been busy sorry. I'll try to get those up later today.

Night Elf Subtlety Rogue HERE

Night Elf Subtlety Rogue Questions and Notes:

Dwarven Protection Warrior HERE

Dwarven Protection Warrior Questions and Notes:

Worgen Frost Mage HERE

Worgen Frost Mage Questions and Notes:

Arch, I'm assuming that the Piercing Howl and Sacred Shield are both Standard Actions

Just answering these 'cause I know about them.

Kolson Wezrae wrote:

1. When we select a talent is it permanent? Or do we get all of them and then decide on which ones to equip for the day?
   Talents are permanent once you select them right now as far as I know. There was talk about allowing "respecs" to allow you to reassign your talents under special circumstances, but I don't know what the result of that was.
   
   
2. The Slow status is not defined. What does it do and how does it work?
   A debuff type that refers to your movement speed being reduced to 10’ for the duration. Similarly, one cannot run or sprint while Slowed.
   
   
3. The Combo status is not defined. What does it do and how does it work?
   Combo status is a status you can obtain by performing certain moves that say they grant Combo status. e.g. Mutilate puts you in to Combo status. This is useful for using abilities such as Eviscerate, which are only able to be used in Combo status.
   

@Gwydo: Correct.

Post to answer Kolson to follow.

@Kolson

        I noticed that the Night Elf Racial has no action listed, only that I can use it once per encounter. What is the activating action?

I'm afraid you are blind, it's on the left with the other Activated abilities.  Shadowmeld.

        The Stealth status and the conditions for attaining it are not defined. This may seem pedantic but a good number of my abilities and talents require or interact with Stealth in some way and I need to know how it works.

Stealth is a roll, with variable DCs I have no intention of ever listing.  Stealth lowers your movement speed to half and prevents people from seeing you, but every round people and monsters and whatnot get a chance to see you.  Full Stealth is a state where you are effectively invisible, and is generally (once obtained) only broken by taking an action to remove it.  Full Stealth is obtained either via special ability or by rolling a 20 on the Stealth rolls.  Any action that isn't moving or 'minor' removes either form of Stealth.

        How many of each of the poisons do I have during the test? How much do poisons usually cost? How difficult are they to get?

For the playtest you have enough of each Poison to coat your weapons a few thousand times, in other words inconsequential.  There's no 'cost' since there's no 'GP' but in general the difficulty in refilling is in acquiring them (either via trying to make some yourself in the field, or by finding someone who not only sells them but is willing to admit to selling them.) not the cost.  Naturally someone who's a regular supplier of the stuff would be a relative non issue.

        The Combo status is not defined. What does it do and how does it work?

Third pretty much answered this one but honestly I thought it was pretty self explanatory.  You enter Combo status from some abilities, and others are only usable from it (which also remove the status).

        The Slow status is not defined. What does it do and how does it work?

Slow is in fact defined towards the top along with the other standard status effects.

        The ranges on Deadly Throw and Shuriken are not defined.

40'.

        Combat Readiness, Leaching Poisons, Elusiveness, Shadowstep, Burst of Speed, Shuriken, and Marked for Death have no defined activation methods.

Nothing does actually, I really need to add another column to... uh everything to define.  But to answer the immediate ones in order; Free, Free,     Free, Free, Free, Standard, and Free respectively.



Dwarven Protection Warrior Questions and Notes

        What is the activation action for the Dwarven Racial?

Swift, in this case.

        Safeguard has no defined activation method.

Safeguard's 1/c ability is Free.


Worgen Frost Mage Questions and Notes

        What is the activation action for the Worgen Racial?

Swift.

        Rune of Power has no defined activation method.

Full.

Got it, 3,000 uses per poison and I'll be counting down! HAHAHAHA!

A little bummed about the mechanic of Slow for this setting, I would have preferred a definition that affected actions taken as well, but I'm overstepping my bounds.

Thanks guys.

@Arch Combo was pretty obvious to me but you always need to define these things for people with little to no experience. It's the best way to minimize questions that the document should answer on its own. Also, sorry about anything I missed last night. I stayed up pretty late to get my talents picked. :p

I'm still working on my initial feedback. I'll send you a copy or however you want it as soon as I'm done. That said, I really want to point out that the level 4 Rogue Talent Nerve Strike is pretty messed up right now. It won't effect a Rogue starting at level 7 or higher but every Rogue working its way up from 4 or less is going to have to wait 1-3 levels before it will be useful at all. Upon initial viewing Level 8 would seem to be more appropriate since its the lowest Talent level after all Rogues have acquired the applicable abilities.

Followup on Stealth: How do I acquire Stealth? Do I need to break enemy line of sight, find some kind of cover, or do I just say "I enter Stealth"?

Sorry to be so pesty on this point but ease of use is one of the things I rate when evaluating anything and its the bread and butter of a Subtle Rogue.

Warrior Talent Avatar: What's the action for this one? Swift?

You roll Stealth.  And then... SHAZAM... you either succeed or fail.

Looking at Nerve Strike now.

Cool. What's the action for the Warrior Talent Avatar? I forgot to ask.

@Kolson: Avatar is a Free.

Updated Holy Paladin

Wow, you really nerfed some of those healing abilities...

All healers were nerfed equally.  You can blame Javan!  *shifts blame away from self*

Well, I blame Kolson and Soaryn! *juggles blame around semi-randomly*

Hey, so I've been gone for a while, what is happening and can I get involved?

Essoje wrote:Well, I blame Kolson and Soaryn! *juggles blame around semi-randomly*

I'll deflect the blame onto White Scarf where it belongs. :p

Sethos wrote:Hey, so I've been gone for a while, what is happening and can I get involved?

Hey, Sethos. Long time no see man.

Oh wow. I could have read this. I apologize.

Well things are kinda crazy, Sethos. You should check out the Dereth campaign summaries, and I did a little exposition for Zeiss in the latest post-session thread. It'd be great if you could stick around for a little longer this time.

Third is running a playtest campaign complete with roleplay for DnD Next, which will be 5E when it comes out. No homebrew rules or exceptions.

This Azeroth campaign thing is Arch's custom Azeroth setting. We're still in playtesting for combat mechanics, but the start of the campaign proper will likely be on January 7th at the earliest, and we're taking Christmas week off.

As for whether or not you can join up, I'd defer to the GMs of both campaigns respectively.

Also, session times are Mondays and Tuesdays at 6pm EST; Dereth campaign on Mondays and Savage campaign on Tuesdays. the Azeroth playtest dungeons are taking over Tuesdays for now, and we've done 1 out of 3 of those so far, and I'm not entirely sure whether the Azeroth campaign proper will take over on Mondays or Tuesdays.


Oh and also! Javan is running his own campaign. It's still very early on and there are only two players right now, so I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you threw a character together.

I'm going to remind people who haven't updated their character sheets yet for tomorrow that you should recalculate hit points, mana and update their talents and abilities since they changed. I'm saying this because my marksman had 82 HP instead of 130, so it's possible I'm not the only one using sheets with outdated information.

I'd love to get involved in all this, but right now I'm drowning in essays, but after this week I'll try and dive back in

Going over my Shaman for next week and I noticed something in one of the abilities that struck me as odd.
Thunderstorm: Centers a blast of storm around the Shaman, knocking back all enemies within 10’.

What's odd is that there is no damage or other effect (knockdown/stun, etc.) nor is there a mention of how far they are knocked back.

Additionally, what is a bargain with a Loa and how/why would I use that?

Thunderstorm does no damage actually.  The knockback's results are variable based on.. well, everything, so rather than put a number I just figure it out on my own, far easier that way. 

A Loa... *rubs eyes* Okay.  Loa are one of the four types of 'spirits' in Azeroth, and they're basically everywhere.  Each Loa is tied to a thing, usually a location or place or something of significance (a tree, a canyon, a river, a type of animal, etc.)  The stronger the Loa, the more they can do.  Going into Loa society and what they value would take forever so I'm going to skip over that but the long and the short of it is that Loa can grant their power (in part or in whole) to mortals either through pacts or, if the mortals are stupid enough, bindings which grant the mortals (insert power here). 

To use an in story example, the high priests of the Amani tribe once bound the Loa most connected to their tribe (those for bear, eagle, dragonhawk, and lynx) and bound them to themselves, which empowered them considerably (and of course earned them the ire of those Loa so when they were, inevitably, defeated... well that wasn't pretty).  But to focus in on another specific example, the high priest of the Eagle (we don't know his name before) went from a regular, albeit powerful Troll, to this: http://wowpedia.org/Akil%27zon_%28original%29 and from that point on referred to himself as the eagle Loa, Akil'zon.

Now that's a bit high up on the power scale but it illustrates the point pretty well.  A HUGE chunk of Troll society, regardless of subrace or tribe, revolves around their interactions with the Loa.

OK.....
This would probably be easier over Vent, but let's see....

Backtracking on wowpedia (http://wowpedia.org/Loa) it says "Shadow Hunters" can gain special blessings. So am I to assume that "Shamans" are "Shadow Hunters", or is this something different?

Also assuming there is an (in lore/game) Loa for each area for you to reference and they would each have a different power/blessing they can imbue onto the Shaman. But what kinds of blessings are we talking about, and any examples of bargains would be appreciated.

And why are bindings bad?

Dammit Gwydo lol.

Okay.  Shadow Hunters are a very special type of what is effectively a hybrid between Hunters (wow class) Shamans (wow class) and Priests (wow class).  I make that 'wow class' modifier to get across the point that the wow classes are technically a broad spectrum of other 'classes' rolled into one, for obvious gameplay reasons.  But it's worth noting that ANY type of Troll can bargain with the Loa if they wish, regardless of class (or if they were just the equivalent of level 0 Commoners).  The Zandalari make an entire coming of age out of binding Loa.  Which brings me to my next point.

Binding is bad for the same reason selling your soul to a demon is bad.  I mean really to me it's obvious but to simplify it; let's say you bind a Loa to yourself, cuz screw that guy.  And you gain powah, woo.  Okay now let's say everything goes 100% perfectly for you, congrats.  Then you die from old age 100 years later.  Guess who's still there and still nursing a grudge, and will ensure you don't enjoy any kind of eternal rest?  Even a small Loa can torment a deceased soul for... well, forever.

Now picture doing that with a BIG Loa.  Yeah.  Morons.

Binding this thing pretty much means you're restricting it in some manner. The longer you keep them restricted, the steeper the price they'll want in return, and if you don't know what to give them or how to iron out the rules, you're haggling in the dark. Cuz I assume most Loa won't care that you're trying to be fair, they just don't like being tied down. But we haven't really talked about that. Is it possible to meet with a Loa on neutral grounds/conditions to arrange a pact? If you're fair with them, can you trust them?