Gurbintroll said:
Any suggestions for a full campaign that holds together well and progresses smoothly?
SotDL isn't super big of the D&D style module, more focused on one-offs and looser campaigns where you can connect them up to suit your own needs. That being said there is an official port of the Freeport Trilogy. That's a D&D module that is structured about how you'd expect, the problem is you'd really want to use the Freeport Companion with it and you're not using supplements. It's also 3 books by itself. The other full length campaign has the same sorts of issue, it's Tales of the Pirate Isles - Queen of Gold. It's a more nautical take on the Tales format. That one probably needs more work to turn into a fully fleshed thing too. Adding more to Tales of the Demon Lord isn't super tricky though, especially if you've been GMing a while. What I'd recommend is reading through Tales and seeing if it works for you. Because of how it's structured you can just remove entire adventures you don't like and do your own thing, or add in one of the pre-made adventures of the appropriate level.
Gurbintroll said:
I've told them it's kind of half way between D&D and Call of Cthulhu (both games they're used to) in terms of tone and lethality.
Those aren't bad touchstones. It might be a little worse than CoC is at levels 0-1 but when you get some resources you'll be in a much better spot. Never gets to D&D levels though.
Gurbintroll said:
Thanks for that. That's something I'd not really noticed. The different options for attacking are just in a sidebar and not given much prominence. I'll make sure I emphasise that they're worth bothering with instead of just doing normal attacks every round.
Just be aware that they do impose a bane on the attack roll, going from 0 to 1 bane is a pretty significant swing in your to-hit. This is why actions like Guard, Guarded Attack, or Distract are so worth while. The reverse is also true, which is why things like Prepare are so good. I don't know if you care about dice probabilities but I can get into that. Simply put, as you only ever use the highest value going from 0 boons/banes to 1 is really big, 1 to 2 is a pretty big, 2 to 3 is a small but worth while change, and more than 3 is pretty negligible.
Gurbintroll said:
I've got a party of six (which will also make it a bit easier on them because the increase in numbers will help make combats more survivable - at least if numbers are as important as they are in D&D it will. One of them is playing each of the ancestries so they can see what they're all like, and amusingly the human went a third profession rather than a second language and got Butcher, Grave Robber, and Cook - so we reckon she's basically Sweeney Todd.
They're fairly important, more actions is always better. The core book's encounter tables are balanced around 3-5 players, so you'll likely have a bit of an easier time if you run it all as is. Tales does kind of ignore those though, so it doesn't matter too much unless you do your own thing. The encounter tables are really well done IMO, SotDL tends to have great balance across the board while being very easy to tweak.
Gurbintroll said:
I'm not sure of the whys of that, but I'll defer to your experience.
This is going to be lengthy.
It's because of how Paths, Power, discovering Traditions, and learning spells work. So Power dictates the maximum Rank of spell you can learn, as well as how many times you can cast any given spell you know. You can typically expect that each odd level of a magic Path will grant you a Power, along with a spell at each level. Paths don't grant their entire set of abilities in a consecutive set of levels. Novice Paths at 1, 2, 5, and 8, Experts are 3, 6, 9, and Masters at 7, and 10. So if you ignore Novice Paths you will have 1 Power at level 3, and you have to wait until level 9 for another Power if you forgo a magical Master Path. With a Novice Path you'll be at 3 Power by level 5, and at 4 Power by 9 if you don't take a magical Master Path. So by forgoing a magical Novice Path you have missed an opportunity to gain a a big chunk of the potential Power you could have. The next piece of the puzzle here is Tradition discovery, you have to first discover a Tradition to learn spells from it. When you discover a Tradition you get a Rank 0 spell from said Tradition but this typically requires you to not learn a spell. The trade-off here being more versatility for less overall power. If you're not taking a magical Novice Path the first spell you therefor learn won't even be Rank 1 but Rank 0 and you'd have to wait until 6 to even get another chance. If you took the Novice Path you'd be getting a Rank 2 spell at level 3 and a Rank 3 spell at level 6, which is a considerable bump. The spell disparity worsens further as magical Novice Paths grant you far more choices at levels 1 and 2 than other Paths tend to. So you miss out on more powerful spells from the few an Expert Path gives you as well as the much larger chunk a Novice Path would. Even further than that spell castings are per spell, not per Rank of spell. So just having more spells known means you can cast more spells total, and more Power also increases the amount of times you can cast any given spell. If that wasn't enough, most magical Expert Paths rely on having spells to use their Talents. If you don't have many castings then you're not going to be getting a lot out of the Path.
To give some actual numbers. If you take Magician then two magic Paths, and discover 3 Traditions (what I feel is the sweetspot for them), you end up with 6 Rank 0's, 3 Rank 1's, 1 or 2 Rank 2's (Based on your level 4 Ancestry pick), 2 Rank 3's, 2 Rank 4's, and 2 Rank 5's by level 10. Assuming you just learn the highest Ranks you can. If you took Priest, and 2 Traditions, it's the same but with 2 Rank 0's and 2 Rank 1's instead. If you skip out on one of those and just discover 1 Tradition, to maximise average Rank, you end up at 1 Rank 0, 1 Rank 1, 1 Rank 2, and 2 Rank 3's. It's a pretty massive gulf. Not going to get into Rogue, as they use a slightly different Power progression. Generally Rogues work fine as whatever though.
As another example with some Paths. We'll use Warrior and Priest as the Novices, with Paladin being the Expert. Paladin is a good example of what I meant by Expert Paths often needing spells for their Talents to work. Warrior gets a two uses of their single Rank 0 spell, and can spend those uses to use Divine Cause, Divine Smite, or Faith Healing. In other words the entirety of what Paladin grants them can be used twice a day and then the Path does nothing but give them some Health. That's against a Priest that would have 6 uses of their 2 Rank 0 spells and then also have two Rank 1 spells and a Rank 2 spell. The gulf is massive and it only grows as they level. So after two uses of its talents or spell the Path becomes worthless on the Warrior, which this just isn't the case on any martial Path as they provide consistent benefits, or the case if you started with magic.
You can make it work in some cases but it's a bit tricky and generally not something I'd advise. I don't really care about efficiency or minmaxing either. I just think the gulf is so great it makes a character actually unfun to play when your toys don't last more than 1 fight. So generally I'd avoid doing it.
Gurbintroll said:
We definitely have two characters (the orc and the changeling) who are intending to go down the magician route; one (the goblin) intending to be a rogue, and one (the dwarf) being interested in becoming a priest. The clockwork hasn't expressed a preference, but given that no-one else is interested in going for a warrior she might go for that.
That sounds fun to me. If you're going the Dark Deeds in Last Hope route I suggested prior that contains "Path Points" which is pretty much "Here is what your actions say about what Path you should take". SotDL has a fairly big focus on having the events of the game guide your choice in Path. Not that it should ever stop you picking the Path that seems the most fun though. The Clockwork player might just want to what happens and then pick based on how they acted.
