Mon Mar 11 11:44:50 2019

At 9 o'clock AM, Day of Freedom, 4th of the Month of Winter
on the Theran calendar Elithranduil perished, never to return.

Dang! Eli! Ma boy! I'm gonna miss ya!

Was hoping to get the chance to slap the tatt on you! As you and I know - leading a specific group of super strong characters is not easy to do or arrange.

Something to consider:You became a FANTASTIC leader for Fort and a PHENOMENAL paladin for Thera. A lot to be proud of for playing a top notch pally, sir!

Pathfinding is all about the journey and I hope you enjoyed yours!

Stay safe out there in the real world and I look forward to your next!


P.S. I'm going to sing this song but instead of the word cowboys I'm going to say PALADINS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPR108kwNo4

"Too bad you deleted I was going to reward you." I kid.

Is that they are entirely in the hands of the players.

If they do the foot learning, leading, and fighting for the shrine - then there's nothing stopping characters from gaining a pretty sizable and well known reward.**


















































**(other than defeating the most difficult mobs in the game)

Overall, great experience. Thanks to the several Imms and players I interacted with that make this game so much fun.

I ended up deploying about a month or so after rolling Elithranduil, and fully expected that to be the end of it. But little did I know, NATO deployments are a little more laid back than what I'm used to so I had more free time than anticipated, and was able to keep him going.

That said, it was still a deployment so my hours were pretty inflexible. I was limited pretty much exclusively to non-peak times, but I tried to put in at least 1-2 hours every day. Unfortunately, I'm on call 24-hours a day, so there were a few times I had to quit out suddenly or just drop link. For those that were impacted by that (mostly applicants I couldn't chat with, or cancelling an explore trip right before we headed off), I do apologize.


Champions are pretty powerful obviously (although monk is better in some ways), but they do have some major weaknesses. I was fortunate that I was able to cover up those weaknesses in ways that most people can't, before people were able to consistently take advantage of them.

Champions lose all offense and all defense if they lose their weapon. Cursed staffs/polearms are rare (and mostly very heavy) and no-disarm doesn't even exist as far as I know. That means it's almost always possible for an enemy to remove a Champions weapon.. and that spells death more often than not for a Champion. Fortunately, when I became Marshall I had a no-disarm leader weapon, so that specific risk was gone (unless I was stupid.. which was a lot).

Champions, even more than some other Paladins, are super vulnerable to being lagged out. Getting lagged out means being stuck with three strikes in melee combat and nothing else.. which is especially bad when most of your defense is active (meaning you have to initiate fend/marshal or you don't tank well). So typically that's also a death sentence. Temperance virtue boosted passive defense and made me immune-lag if I was smart, or at least gave me chances to avoid lagging attacks and get away. That meant someone spamming bash didn't ever really scare me.

Elves have low HP and are vuln iron. Targetted attacks like flurry/pincer/drum can be very dangerous, even through sanc/prot. But with the Evasive edge + perfect Evade skill + Temperance meant I avoided close to half of them. Even so, most of my deaths were due to someone hitting 2-3 pincers in a row. Would've been much more if I didn't have a few fights where I was evading like a mongoose.

Basically, that's just another way of saying that I was very lucky, and also gameplanned specifically to avoid the most glaring weaknesses. Champions don't always have those advantages, and they have a ton of weaknesses that people for some reason don't often exploit. Storm Champions may be the exception to that though.

Anyway, a few goodbyes:

Korsgaard - I was a terrible priest for most of Elith's life, so I don't know why you always seemed happy with me. I'm pretty sure I went weeks or even months between coming to see you each time. Sorry about that. Every interaction was awesome though, as I've come to expect from you. Sorry I failed (again) to complete the final quest and earn the tat. I had absolute confidence that I was going to be able to.. but my limited availability and limited allies made that impossible. I don't know how many times I died trying to solo dragon lairs, but hopefully that shows I didn't completely blow it off. I'll do it someday though.

Aurew/Aehwic - I really wanted to outlive at least one of you two, but apparently you'll both just be around forever. Unfortunately, playtimes didn't align with either of you very much, especially over the last couple of months. You're both quality players though, and I was happy to have you around when I was lucky enough for us to be online together.

Juntio - You struggled early on, but I think you've found your way lately. Definitely happy to see you doing well now. Hope you still have that thing I gave you. Keep on trucking.

Zaralv - You were ballsy as hell, and I appreciate that. Eventually you figured out how to fight me and that meant our fights could go either way. Soemtimes I'd win, sometimes you.. but that just made them fun.

Saelriza - You were the biggest pain in my ass, by far. Shaman is pretty much anti-paladin most of the time. I was lucky when I could drive you off, but most of the time you sent me running. Enjoyed the fights, even if you got the better of them most of the time. Not sure what happened to you when you dropped off the Council, but hoping to see you back up there soon.

Zaveul - I speak from the heart when I say this: You are a pathetic piece of ####. Literally every time we were logged in together, I could count on you flying overhead waiting for me to fight someone else, then camping my recall hoping that I'd show up injured. And if I ever died when you were logged in, I could count on you showing up at my corpse to full loot. Even if you weren't remotely involved in the kill. Go #### yourself.

Ryrzual/Masino - The two of you were about the same as Zaruhv, from what I saw. You just weren't around when I was quite as much. Both of you need to realize that this is a game about having fun. It's possible for your enemies to have fun when you're logged on. When you act the way that you do, no one wants to PK with you, interact with you or even remain logged in when you are. All you're doing is creating an environment where you'll be playing CF alone. If that isn't your goal (and hell, maybe it is), you might want to rethink your asshole behavior.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some folks, but besides those few idiots I mentioned above, I have nothing but positive things to say about the whole experience.

You were great to have as an enemy, you were aggressive (maybe too aggressive) but you fought well of course. It's good to see there are still people willing to throw down in less than ideal circumstances to contrast some of the ####tier behavior you mention. You will be missed and GLWYN!

Classy player and a great enemy. You were far tougher than a trapper thief should be, and you made life hell whenever you were around.

Hope you know that the mild ####-talk was entirely IC (from a sphere Courage paladin who didn't understand the concept of bad odds), those times that you wouldn't fight me straight up were offensive.. but then I had little respect for any enemy who wouldn't fight a straight up fight. Player to player though, nothing but respect.

I liked Elith a lot. Any time I saw your dialogue or interactions with applications/Fort members, etc. you just shined as a sort of 'grizzled goodie' image.

Total success of a character, even if you think you bungled Kors' religion. Nice job!

-Ish

And thank you for those random interactions, and especially the Secret Santa.

Still don't know how I ended up both giving a gift to, and recieving a gift from, undead Imms. I honestly thought it was rigged when I found out who I was giving the gift to. Doubly so when I saw who I got a gift from.

Seriously, thanks for doing all that you do. Eventually I'll come up with a role that fits into your religion, so expect me to come knocking sooner than later.

Haha, I swear it was random! A buncha people didn't believe me. I organized the list through one of those 'secret santa sorter' sites, so it didn't involve my picks at all! I laughed pretty hard when I saw yours, though, since I mean... How much better could it get?

And thanks for having awesome characters. Imming is fun because of players, so it works both ways . And beware the Ish-religion... Some folks think it seems okay, then writing comes up.... And it's the ol' Delete-Train from there, bwa ha ha.

-Ish

This is a sad day for the Fortress! Thank you for all your help and guidance! You were a powerhouse and I enjoyed our fights together. I was hoping we'd get the chance to team up again but alas, it was not meant to be.

The game is better for classy players like yourself. Hope to run into you again!

I would note that virtues like fortitude boost attacks. And someone who disarms you still has to stop you rewielding when, as an elf, you have great 1 round skills to use while their disarms are almost certainly 2 round skills. Plus you resist the disarms pretty well in the first place unless blind.

Lag wise, temperance is transformative, but at the end of the day if someone can't lag you reliably from the start (eg because they don't know what size you'll be) you are probably already hastened or lagging them out in preparation to hasten.

Strength loss I just don't see as a major issue because you can cover the stat so well. Dex loss though can weaken your combat quite a bit (spin and bat) and not that many people target it. But again, you do still have the issue that they don't get many command if you are able to hasten.

Also the accelerate prep makes being lagged out less dangerous. (Unless it is the other guy using it and not the champion.)

Champions are beatable, but they aren't that balanced imo.

Ps. Your Paladin adherence to the code is and always had been impeccable too. Keep in mind that balance wise, some contrive eats to effectively remove the coffee from being a constraint, and that needs consideration too.

Also, don't forget that temperance is reducing your offensive melee.

Champions not using temperance have better offensive melee.

Man, loved Elithranduil, and from the very start I KNEW you would be replacing me, so when Korsgaard asked me to step down because my hours had dropped significantly and I was losing interest, I was absolutely willing. That said, I know personally how frustrating Korsgaard's religion can be. I believe I had his first follower, an acolyte shapeshifter named Syldur, and given there were tons of Kors followers rolled when he was revealed, I found putting a group together to kill Tiamat that didn't involve OTHER pathfinders... impossible. In fact, as we were leaving to kill Tiamat, after dispatching the other dragons easily enough, I was told that I couldn't participate, because there were other pathfinders in the group. I totally get why, the religion is about leadership... but at the time getting another group together that had the necessary component classes, and did NOT include other pathfinders - was quite literally impossible. In the end, it was why I deleted Syldur - my end game goals were unachievable, and I got bored.

Anyway, loved Elithranduil, you did great, and GLWYN.

For some reason I thought it was just that you couldn’t have tattooed followers in the group. No other members of the religion at all?

Think about the whole purpose of this religion. It's right there in what they call the followers: Pathfinder.

Being a Pathfinder is about taking on a journey towards great challenges, and finding a way to overcome those challenges. Finding a path. Not following someone else's path.

If you're tagging along on someone else's grand adventure, you aren't the one finding the path, you aren't the one overcoming those obstacles. You're just along for the ride. The religion isn't about being second fiddle (there's another religion for that), it's about being taking charge and being the leader.


I think the "rule" about no more than one Pathfinder in a group is more of a practical one (and actually, in two followers I never even had it spelled out by Korsgaard directly). You can't have two people organizing, planning and leading a group, so you can't have multiple Pathfinders get "credit" in the same group.

That said - I'm not sure if it would be allowed or not for a tatted Pathfinder to take a passive role and let a fellow non-tatted Pathfinder lead. For instance, Drissa finished the Kings Quest when I (as Tamhas) was still working on it. Would Drissa have been allowed to be a passive part of a Yzekon trip, if I was leading it? Or if I was on the Dragon quest instead, could Drissa have accompanied me against Tiamat? I honestly don't know, but it seems reasonable if it was RP'd the right way (ie, not Drissa saying "Go east here, now open that door.." the whole time).

That’s more in line with what I thought. Thanks.