Meat grinder and cookies

[mining]

Damage reduction is critical, but note to the brave: Some things do bludgeoning/slashing damage. I'll let people figure out which ones though. Hint: check monster descriptions.

Much rape was had, but group was about 20 strong, so it was full on ant mode.

[frogofpeace]

Was fun and you received a full blood offering - thanks for the preview!

[Bargeld]

Yeah that was an awesome challenge. Many frantic recoveries, good fun.

[Lokey]

As far as items, they aren't equippable yet. A few will be minorly upgraded or changed depending on how much second and third guessing we do.

We also got some useful info on tweaks needed, so thanks for that. We'll see when we can make them and run it again.

[Lokey]

Oh, ideas for items are welcome too. We don't want them to be everybody uses them, but do want something distinct and useful.

So stuff that you've seen + ring/ammy/cloak from caster drop we don't know what to do with yet.

[mining]

Oh, ideas for items are welcome too. We don't want them to be everybody uses them, but do want something distinct and useful.

So stuff that you've seen + ring/ammy/cloak from caster drop we don't know what to do with yet.

If it doesn't make it / thematically fit into Fish-town then it may make it into somewhere else.

[Daltian]

I don't know if we were lucky with spawns on yesterdays run but it felt a bit on the easy side. Or maybe it was superb luring, since we mostly fought at most 3 mobs at the time, but mostly 1 or 2. Anyway, make us feel more pain!!

[mining]

I don't know if we were lucky with spawns on yesterdays run but it felt a bit on the easy side. Or maybe it was superb luring, since we mostly fought at most 3 mobs at the time, but mostly 1 or 2. Anyway, make us feel more pain!!

The luring was pretty amazing, party size was also pretty good. I also lightened the spawns from first run through - you used to get like 3 BGs in a square metre, lol.

[frogofpeace]

Yes, it did seem a little easy compared to the evening before, and I agree that the pulling was really well done (REALLY well done!). It seemed like it could go pear-shaped pretty easily, though, and we got in the same trouble when we were fighting more than about 3 mobs, especially before we got used to the party. In general, not as tough as what I saw the first run. The things that hit hard hit really hard, and seem to have good AB, so we'd get one- or two-shotted quite a bit. We also had a tanky party, and at least three clerics, so we were falling over each other to heal and res. Of course, those archers are pretty effective against clerics lol. LOL!

The drops were very generous as well - we were there for something like 3-4 hours, though, so maybe that was to be expected. Thank you, nonetheless!

I liked a couple of the items that had saves and skill bonuses mixed up (e.g. the belt with disc points and fort save). Skills on items where they don't normally appear are very useful in certain situations, and they don't seem to be overpowered. I would like more of that, especially for skills that are of niche use (e.g. search). The new versions of underused weapons was good, too.

How come NPC clerics never seem to buff with UEF? Sure, you can strip it easily enough, but tank-and-cleric harm spam is pretty dang effective in a lot of PvM. You'd think those hyper-intelligent dragons would take a few points in UMD.

The spawn thing after we came out of the - temple? headquarters? - into the military district was really interesting, although it would have wiped us and I thought you said it was a bug. A nasty surprise, but it'd be interesting to figure out how to plan for that type of effect. Maybe tone it down a bit

[weasel423]

A relevant toon. (SD's, assassins, need not apply)

<spam>
Although it would be nice if SL had a "relevant" prestige class to play in epic parties
</spam>

[Ajantis.]

First off, let me just say that adding new areas and what I've seen so far is really great, and the work that's been put into this is appreciated. I'm really enjoying testing out the new area, and look forward to doing it more.


But...

I was asked what my thoughts were on items/monster balances, etc, and I think I have an answer for you now.

The original concept for this plane is for another epic, high level plane on par with Celestia & Abyss. However, the Astral Sea isn't a higher plane, nor are the Githyanki gods themselves.

The plane created so far needs something else. I compare it to the Dwarven Plane. The Dwarf areas are basically several maps of the same spawn, seemingly monotonous, however it isn't because it connects to other areas, i.e. goblins/Alzaara and Fire Plane, and thus House of Knowledge, etc...

You are limiting yourselves by the original inspiration to make another higher plane, which is a good idea, however I don't think this is the right one for that. Do Baator for that

Tu'Narath should connect to Illithids perhaps, and be on a similar CR as Dwarves. Enter it via a githyanki raiding party from Astral plane that's attacking the Mind Flayers. Which gives you more of a mix in spawns overall. And thus Tu'Narath is a side route on a larger adventure, rather than the destination.

Githyanki are not gods and shouldn't have CR 43 as you might expect in other planes. It's queen is not a god either, but the 142 leader of the Gith that turned into a lich in order to maintain her rule. Definitely an enemy to be reckoned with, but not necessarily and epic god, worthy to be on the same level as a Celestia/Abyss/Baator boss.

I realize to implement these suggestions requires a lot of re-working, and perhaps it isn't worth it to do so. I'm just expressing my thoughts on my realization as to why I can't put my finger on what the problem is or what balancing needs exist. I'm conflicted on what the motivation for an adventure to Tu'Narath should be.


One thing I did think of though, that even though it's a relatively smaller plane, it might fuel a niche for a 2-3 hour adventure. DWP, DE, to some extent Celestia and Abyss... awesome planes that require hours, if not days to complete with an adventuring party that seems to always break up half way into it. I suppose I'm not looking at this from a farming perspective, and I know many (if not most) of you do.

[Nocturne]

I'm gonna agree with AJ on this one. While it has been fun, it still seems somewhat bland. The idea of attaching this new set of areas to Illithids sounds really cool and would give players more reason to go fight the mind flayers.

[Mixtli]

*I'm not all that into D&D specifics, so forgive my ignorance on the subject.*

I think the new area should pose a challenge for the player base. Make it very hard. Something to strive for.
A reason to make a new build, redo that CoT, etc...

I wouldn't mind if we had a place that, after say 6 months, only 2 -3 parties could claim they beat it.

[mining]

Tun'arath isn't going to be a stand alone plane - it does connect to Illithids, albeit not directly (some people know what I mean, some don't, the challenge will be to figure it out). It's intended to be of a challenge comparable to the abyss - I mean, it's never going to be huge because it's a city. There's only so much variety you can get out of it. So, I'm making it hard, with a relatively short "complete" time, if that makes sense. It is intended that you can get on, grab a few (ok, like 20 so far ) people, go there, and struggle through it, and kill a boss and get some epic loot. Unlike Celestia or Abyss you don't need to go battle your way through a few areas first, kill a bunch of bosses then battle your way to the ultimate boss; instead you can go in with the intention of specifically killing Vlaakith, or specifically killing Vetch'r'r.

At the moment I think it's still slightly under-tuned - the original setup had too many "ohshi-" spawns, while the second setup has too few "ohshi- " moments, though there were still a few .

You can expect to see more, larger areas connecting to Tunarath and The Astral Plane in future Those options will all be much larger in total, though for the moment I'd really like to get you a good solid planar region, thus why we're not delaying to complete another 20 odd areas kind of deal.

[Lokey]

SD still has a few PvM build purposes even if you can't hide, let's not forget that

DnD anything isn't intended to be used as is all the time, and that's besides nwn/ns particulars, but it's handier to treat it that way on the tubes because we don't know your house rules. It's also just a planeshift away, how much does a scroll of that go for (seriously, Elysium has cr 2,3,etc encounters)? Besides, Tun has a few epic spellcasters and they've been around for millenia: it can be as arbitrarily hard as you want as a DM straight out of the book.

Yah, and Half-ogrehome and we also want to do something with Slaad someday too, plus whatever Tep's always whining about Certainly don't want to think of a new plane before we first-stab the last what, dozen items in Tun. And tart up the phoned in maps a bit. Then beat Tun with 4 hogres, one of them played by Tep.