TOPIC: POd about no saves/no dodges

I too would be cureious to know the token details.

I'm a bit confused about the Boots of the North Wind. They should never have been shown to a room DM. The coach should have added 3 damage to your melee damage box total and moved on. They should also have included it in the stack of tokens you could put away. Perhaps you mean another boots?


As for typed damage I too would strongly urge Jeff and crew never to use flavor damage of a type we have resistances to, because that is inconsistant. If its push damange or puzzle fail damage just say it without flavor or say its eldritch damage and cannot be reduced. Otherwise the players will assume they can reduce it, how are they supposed to know. Also, HPs are tracked by the player so make it clear to them if you want them to track it properly. I know as a coach I instructed players to reduce the damange said to them based on their tokens, indicate aloud they were doing so and to have the token handy should the DM ask to see it. For example if DM says take 3 shock, player says reducing shock by 1 alound and reduced their current HP by 2.

valetutto wrote:
I'm a bit confused about the Boots of the North Wind. They should never have been shown to a room DM. The coach should have added 3 damage to your melee damage box total and moved on. They should also have included it in the stack of tokens you could put away. Perhaps you mean another boots?

The issue was the room in Golembane where cold did more damage. It was pointed out that Boots of the North is 3 points cold damage. That is why it was brought up, since the boots were a specific damage type.

valetutto wrote: I too would be cureious to know the token details.
As for typed damage I too would strongly urge Jeff and crew never to use flavor damage of a type we have resistances to, because that is inconsistant. If its push damange or puzzle fail damage just say it without flavor or say its eldritch damage and cannot be reduced. Otherwise the players will assume they can reduce it, how are they supposed to know. Also, HPs are tracked by the player so make it clear to them if you want them to track it properly. I know as a coach I instructed players to reduce the damange said to them based on their tokens, indicate aloud they were doing so and to have the token handy should the DM ask to see it. For example if DM says take 3 shock, player says reducing shock by 1 alound and reduced their current HP by 2.

I think that's a great way to do damage reduction. Or have players carry around a little card saying "Here's my damage reduction" separately from the party card. But that may be too fiddly. The downside of seeing specific tokens is that 99% of players are digging those out of their token bags or somewhere and slowing everything down.

I am also still a fan of allowing immunity/damage reduction items to reduce puzzle damage. I don't think that the fun of puzzles is making a party burn through healing as fast as possible, so I don't see the harm in letting them reduce the damage from puzzle attempts. Push damage is a different story.

To Kaledor's point, I would like to mention again as I did before GenCon that it makes a LOT of sense to have it noted on the party card that the party has a type of damage the monster is vulnerable to. In Lycans Combat, we had one DM be like "Wait, do you have any fire damage?" And we were like "Uh, ALL of our melee guys have Bracers of Fire!" But he didn't have time to recalculate damage for the three rounds of combat that had gone before...

I agree Toran especially if it applies to the dungeon. Like Golembane... just another column with cold damage.

Maybe next year I will put small colored stickers on my weapon to communicate the special damage types that it does.

Push damage cannot be prevented, period.

Puzzle damage is often of a specific type that can be reduced or prevented. For instance, if the darkforce (black) ball fell in room 1 Golembane, it did darkforce damage - someone with the IS:Topaz Trilliant would not take any damage from it.

Other puzzles did damage that was not preventable b/c it was from a new source - magimagnetism.

Not that it matters, but my OCDemon compels me to point out it's darkrift not darkforce.

bpsymington wrote: Push damage cannot be prevented, period.

Puzzle damage is often of a specific type that can be reduced or prevented. For instance, if the darkforce (black) ball fell in room 1 Golembane, it did darkforce damage - someone with the IS:Topaz Trilliant would not take any damage from it.

Other puzzles did damage that was not preventable b/c it was from a new source - magimagnetism.

I had always been told that puzzle damage wasn't able to be soaked previously.

Push damage, of course, can't be soaked. If it's possible to soak regular puzzle damage, then it would be nice for that to be clarified.

AH damage type dealt.

Yes I'm on a crusade this year to add check boxes for damage type dealt.
This way, if your build includes it, the coach check the box and moves on. If that damage type comes up its handeled by the marked box.

The issue is currently space. We need small check boxes and some coded ledgend that makes sense to the coaches and the DMs.

This is all infinately superior to the current method of trying to write in Cold/Fire/Darkrift/Sacred/shock/sonic ect. in a tiny box with poor lighting.

There is no perfect way to adjudicate but a simple method would be to figure out what the avg amount is and just assume they have it if the box is checked.

so for example if your fire box is checked and the monster is immune to fire I know to reduce the damage by 3(or whatever) even if you dont actually do 3 points of fire. It will even out in the long run as you'll be rewarded for vunrable mobs in the same way.

Simple, quick.
no fuss no muss and it would have prevented the above issue.

Raywind wrote:

Seth Murray wrote: I had an unfortunate encounter with a coach over the interaction between ring of the wolf and orb of might. He eventually let me have the +1 to hit, but only after he asked three directors and saw the tokendb entry showing the orb as non-magical

Orb of Might is an offhand weapon, and typically, only the mainhand +hit is recorded on the party card. Mainhand and offhand bonuses should *not* be added together.

Are you saying that a Ranger doesn't need to worry about the magic status of their offhand weapon? For instance, if I bought a +2 long sword for my main hand, I could use a common longword in my offhand and it would act as a +2 longsword as well for purposes of hitting? Likewise, if I use bracer weapons, using a +1 bracer along with a Bracer of the Quivering Palm would make the BoQP +1 to hit as well? If so, that's a great tip.

Either way, neither my bare fist nor my Orb are magic, but he was wanting to deny the ring due to the Orb. I won the argument, but it was a little hair-raising, given that I had spent a lot of time researching this issue and sniffing around for the surprisingly rare Ring of the Wolf.

The non-magical is a bit of a sticky/tricky issue.
Yes the orb doesn't have a plus to hit but it is part of a set and sets are listed as a magical effect.

Further more the orb of might is listed as a "unique artifact" and does adjust your damage via adjusting your str which is a magical enchancement.

While I agree the letter of the law is currently on your side I think the spirit of the rule might go the other way.

I would not at all be suprised if the orb of might gets the Magical tag and breaks your combo. But thats just my observation. All I know is if I had been your coach my inital reaction would have been to say no it doesn't count but it wouldn't have taken much convincing for me to side with you and add the plus in there.

Seth Murray wrote:

Raywind wrote:

Seth Murray wrote: I had an unfortunate encounter with a coach over the interaction between ring of the wolf and orb of might. He eventually let me have the +1 to hit, but only after he asked three directors and saw the tokendb entry showing the orb as non-magical

Orb of Might is an offhand weapon, and typically, only the mainhand +hit is recorded on the party card. Mainhand and offhand bonuses should *not* be added together.

Are you saying that a Ranger doesn't need to worry about the magic status of their offhand weapon? .

Practically speaking, yes there is only 1 box. While some folks remember to put a slash through it to indicate the + on the off hand, I suspec this gets missed or some DMs won't know to even check.

If you equip a +2 sword but slide an empty puck you will likely get the +2 that was added into your party card for melee to hit.

Some sacrifices get made do to time limits and training.