I did really good at WotR yesterday
Apr. 28th, 2025 07:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI finished Drezen again yesterday, including the optional really hard fight, and the optional fight only took a handful of tries.
... playing without all dying repeatedly isn't possible on core. for me. anyway.
I stopped in the middle to let my shopping in and then got around to eating while I was doing all the talky bits when Drezen is first set up.
Seelah calls herself sister Seelah to the Knight Commander but Auntie Seelah to Daeran. Specifically in the context of saying she'll spank him in the drinking contest. Daeran says he's fine with losing to such a worthy opponent especially if she carries him upstairs to bed.
which struck me as obscurely sad because there is no up to the rooms prepared that day, there's broken places the players can't get past, so he's home, but home isn't quite there.
It made me think about ages and relative ages. We don't get precise numbers for most of them, just Ember iirc, and it's tricky to figure out lives from life experience, since the correlation between experience and XP is necessarily fluid with regards to backstory. I mean you level up repeatedly in days in Kenabres, age isn't measurable from experience. And then there's how old assorted races are for their age category, most obviously Ember, but what with meeting a half elf, a tiefling, an aasimar, and a mongrel right away, what an age even means gets messy from the get go.
Pathfinder rules for ages as per the back of Advaced Race Guide say the youngest a 1st level tiefling or aasimar can be random rolled to be is 24. Aasimar or tiefling adulthood is listed as 20, where human adulthood is listed as 15. It doesn't quite make sense to take that number as written, humans can start out at a minimum of 16 because you roll assorted numbers of dice to add on top. Humans are coming out of training ready to face the world at 16 minimum, so I feel like considering 16 adult is the lowest humans can go.
Aasimar and tieflings roll more dice. Their aging effects start at 35/53/70 same as humans, but they are adult late and roll more dice. So they're slow learners, until they hit 1st level and meet the standard character progression. Aasimar and tieflings are rolling at least 4 dice on top of a 20 year adulthood, so they're not going to be rolled up at 1st level until at least 24.
Which means, one, those with the blood of the outer planes are going to special school compared to humans or even half elves. Half elves are adult at 20 but can roll a 1 and be fully 1st level at 21.
Two, unlike half elves, after that they just have less time. Slow start, normal age pattern for humans? Less time before ageing starts taking their stats.
Three... There's a solid interpretation that Daeran is actually pretty young for an aasimar.
It's interesting because we know Ember is an elf child read as a child by people you meet, and we know however young Woljif might be, most people saw a tiefling. Daeran described at his party gets compared to angels, inevitably unfavourably. Due to being an actual mortal child. But being an aasimar and a noble and a rich man and someone who was found having drunk all the wine after a disaster of a party just... seems like the order of interpretations, before anyone gets to age.
Daeran could be an adult the way a college fresher is an adult. Possibly after a gap year of partying.
He could have grown up with tutors not just because he was rich, but because he, and some of his family, were slow, compared to humans without celestial influence.
Or I could be over interpreting a single dice table in the back of an expansion book, because I am older than a lot of characters and they keep looking younger from here.
Ember saying she's going to the trouble so the trouble won't come to more children? Makes me think of how young how many people were.
I haven't played as an aasimar yet and wonder what dialogue I'd get.
I am playing as a tiefling and it throws in a bit extra here and there, stuff about you understanding how bad tieflings have it, or just between us yeah the abyss whispers, or a bit I just did when you ask a vendor what a tiefling is doing in the crusade and he's like I bet you're only asking because you had to answer that stupid question so many times you're taking your turn.
... the dialogue does offer you chances to say all the same prejudiced things, you just get a few extra words of answers sometimes.
The other thing is I keep choosing the character portraits where they're wearing a mask and hood, and then everyone always recognises your race anyway. And sure the view of your animated character doesn't get a face covering unless you get a mask with game stats, but it still feels weird? Like how do you know there's horns under the hood, if I'm trying to cover my hair all the time anyway? Not all the options have glowy eyes anyway. Why do tails always stick out of your outfit? They're not for grabbing or for balance, you could just keep them under your robes. But nope, everybody always knows.
Which is super weird when the race guide says "No two tieflings look alike".
I am playing a tiefling witch and I just chose the Angel path. Apparently this means not getting some cool out of the spellbook options, but, tiefling witch angel makes so many characters eat their prejudices, I am pretty determined to finish the game this way.
... it is not easy on Core. I am spending all the money on healing and therefore not getting the best equipment. It's... tricky.
But my achievements started pinging again after eight months of nope, so I have incentive to stick with it!
Sure they only ping after I turn it all off and on again, but, incentives, I am getting them. On Core even.
Can't go back and get the optional boss fight from Kenabres though, don't have a save I could conveniently do, it keeps saying too full.
... if I do another play through I guess that would be why then...
Shall see how this one goes. Last one stalled when I had to drop the difficulty for Lost Chapel. This time I grit my teeth and invited Regill along and kept Camellia and did all the locations before Lost Chapel or Drezen and it went much better.
Onwards!
... playing without all dying repeatedly isn't possible on core. for me. anyway.
I stopped in the middle to let my shopping in and then got around to eating while I was doing all the talky bits when Drezen is first set up.
Seelah calls herself sister Seelah to the Knight Commander but Auntie Seelah to Daeran. Specifically in the context of saying she'll spank him in the drinking contest. Daeran says he's fine with losing to such a worthy opponent especially if she carries him upstairs to bed.
which struck me as obscurely sad because there is no up to the rooms prepared that day, there's broken places the players can't get past, so he's home, but home isn't quite there.
It made me think about ages and relative ages. We don't get precise numbers for most of them, just Ember iirc, and it's tricky to figure out lives from life experience, since the correlation between experience and XP is necessarily fluid with regards to backstory. I mean you level up repeatedly in days in Kenabres, age isn't measurable from experience. And then there's how old assorted races are for their age category, most obviously Ember, but what with meeting a half elf, a tiefling, an aasimar, and a mongrel right away, what an age even means gets messy from the get go.
Pathfinder rules for ages as per the back of Advaced Race Guide say the youngest a 1st level tiefling or aasimar can be random rolled to be is 24. Aasimar or tiefling adulthood is listed as 20, where human adulthood is listed as 15. It doesn't quite make sense to take that number as written, humans can start out at a minimum of 16 because you roll assorted numbers of dice to add on top. Humans are coming out of training ready to face the world at 16 minimum, so I feel like considering 16 adult is the lowest humans can go.
Aasimar and tieflings roll more dice. Their aging effects start at 35/53/70 same as humans, but they are adult late and roll more dice. So they're slow learners, until they hit 1st level and meet the standard character progression. Aasimar and tieflings are rolling at least 4 dice on top of a 20 year adulthood, so they're not going to be rolled up at 1st level until at least 24.
Which means, one, those with the blood of the outer planes are going to special school compared to humans or even half elves. Half elves are adult at 20 but can roll a 1 and be fully 1st level at 21.
Two, unlike half elves, after that they just have less time. Slow start, normal age pattern for humans? Less time before ageing starts taking their stats.
Three... There's a solid interpretation that Daeran is actually pretty young for an aasimar.
It's interesting because we know Ember is an elf child read as a child by people you meet, and we know however young Woljif might be, most people saw a tiefling. Daeran described at his party gets compared to angels, inevitably unfavourably. Due to being an actual mortal child. But being an aasimar and a noble and a rich man and someone who was found having drunk all the wine after a disaster of a party just... seems like the order of interpretations, before anyone gets to age.
Daeran could be an adult the way a college fresher is an adult. Possibly after a gap year of partying.
He could have grown up with tutors not just because he was rich, but because he, and some of his family, were slow, compared to humans without celestial influence.
Or I could be over interpreting a single dice table in the back of an expansion book, because I am older than a lot of characters and they keep looking younger from here.
Ember saying she's going to the trouble so the trouble won't come to more children? Makes me think of how young how many people were.
I haven't played as an aasimar yet and wonder what dialogue I'd get.
I am playing as a tiefling and it throws in a bit extra here and there, stuff about you understanding how bad tieflings have it, or just between us yeah the abyss whispers, or a bit I just did when you ask a vendor what a tiefling is doing in the crusade and he's like I bet you're only asking because you had to answer that stupid question so many times you're taking your turn.
... the dialogue does offer you chances to say all the same prejudiced things, you just get a few extra words of answers sometimes.
The other thing is I keep choosing the character portraits where they're wearing a mask and hood, and then everyone always recognises your race anyway. And sure the view of your animated character doesn't get a face covering unless you get a mask with game stats, but it still feels weird? Like how do you know there's horns under the hood, if I'm trying to cover my hair all the time anyway? Not all the options have glowy eyes anyway. Why do tails always stick out of your outfit? They're not for grabbing or for balance, you could just keep them under your robes. But nope, everybody always knows.
Which is super weird when the race guide says "No two tieflings look alike".
I am playing a tiefling witch and I just chose the Angel path. Apparently this means not getting some cool out of the spellbook options, but, tiefling witch angel makes so many characters eat their prejudices, I am pretty determined to finish the game this way.
... it is not easy on Core. I am spending all the money on healing and therefore not getting the best equipment. It's... tricky.
But my achievements started pinging again after eight months of nope, so I have incentive to stick with it!
Sure they only ping after I turn it all off and on again, but, incentives, I am getting them. On Core even.
Can't go back and get the optional boss fight from Kenabres though, don't have a save I could conveniently do, it keeps saying too full.
... if I do another play through I guess that would be why then...
Shall see how this one goes. Last one stalled when I had to drop the difficulty for Lost Chapel. This time I grit my teeth and invited Regill along and kept Camellia and did all the locations before Lost Chapel or Drezen and it went much better.
Onwards!