Important Notices

[Jarre]

so 9pm-1am uk time then

[Mezlo]

so 9pm-1am SDT time then

correct

[Firewind]

Awesome, this gives me time to get drinks after the game too

[Jarre]

lol don't forget clocks go back an hour tonight in UK Paul so you get an extra hours kip tonight (or drinking)

[Yygdrasil]

So as I had briefly mentioned yesterday, I had an idea for making the battle encounters more challenging. I couldn't say for certain that I would actually use the idea until I did a little more work to it. Late last night I finished putting the pieces together and it's officially ready to be presented to you all.

Everyone, I'd like you to meet my General. You might know him better as:

???General???

Taskmage

"Oh but what's a general???" you might be asking yourself. Allow me to explain:

I read about an idea that another DM had implimented in his own campaign (to much success), took the premise and then tweaked it to my own needs.The idea itself is simple. There are usually only 2 entities in a campaign; each with their own set of responsibilities and expectations:

1. The DM
- Creating the world
- Managing the NPC personalities and PC interactions
- Engineering the story line
- Constructing encounters

2. The PCs
- Roleplay
- Adventure
- Explore
- Have fun

What TM will be doing is acting as the 3rd and impartial party:

3. The General
- Playing AS the enemy during combat
- Making choices based on the character models set out by the DM
- Actively trying to kill the party

As a DM, it's in my nature (as a general rule) to try to scale encounters to the PCs so that they can win but only if they're smart about it and use their characters to the best of their ability. In this regard, the DM is almost... on the side of the PCs and manipulating their success. The General acts as an impartial combatant whose purpose is to maximize the efficiency of the monsters (and the combat environment) to bring life to the encounter and make their threat seem more real.

Micromanaging 5 PCs and a small army of enemies while trying to judge rulings and plan for whats coming next is stressful. The General eliminates one of the most demanding of those factors while providing the PCs with an actual person so fight against who isn't half distracted at all times.

The General will not role play the personality of any major NPCs, be they friend or foe. He will simply take the stat cards of the enemies I create for a given encounter and assess the predetermined battlefields to devise a strategy (a virtually doomed strategy) to defeat the PCs... based on the realistic intellect of the monsters I give him to work with.

I will be consulting TM prior to all sessions and giving him information on the monsters that are to be involved in the expected encounters as well as crude maps and/or descriptions of the expected battlefields. During our sessions, he will be your opponent. His goal? More often than not... it will be to kill you in the most efficient and believable way possible.

Of course he will be held to the same standard as regular PCs, in that it is expected that he will not meta-game or use any prior knowledge of the PCs unless such information is readily available to the monsters/enemies he is playing as.

Discuss.

[Firewind]

So TM and Mezlo are trying to kill us now?

[Taskmage]

[cidbahamut]

This is just so you don't have to look up grappling rules anymore isn't it...

[Yygdrasil]

So Mezlo and TM are trying to kill us now?

fixed

- - - Updated - - -

This is just so you don't have to look up grappling rules anymore isn't it...

I won't deny that it's a perk. I'll still have to remain aware of the rules... but less.

[Firewind]

Come guys think of it as a challenge! We now have two people to try and blag into allowing us to pull of some crazy thing because of ambiguously worded rules.

And also two people to get messily drunk.

[Yygdrasil]

You're mistaking TM for a DM. This is not the case. His job... as stated above... is to kill you. Why would he swing the fight in your favor even more than it already is? Nope... I'm pretty sure that he'd sooner exploit a weakness than openly permit a handicap.

This does not bode well for you. Not one bit. I'll be enjoying this.

[Firewind]

But we can still get TM drunk or drive him so mad that he turns to drink!

[cidbahamut]

The important thing is that he's drinking as heavily as the rest of us.

Alcohol: leveling the playing field since forever.

[Firewind]

[Yygdrasil]