BSG

Did any of us use our OPG abilities?

Yes; in fact, everyone but you did so. Romo used his on turn 3.3 to get Zarek out of the Brig. Kat used hers on turn 11.1 to destroy 5 raiders in Sector 6. Zarek was the last, on turn 12.4, to play a mutiny card before attempting to escape the Brig.

Zarek was the last, on turn 12.4, to play a mutiny card before attempting to escape the Brig.

Not that it did much good; I think by that point we'd cycled all the way through the Mutiny deck. All the cards you offered were ones I'd already rejected once!

buried no less than five jump icons

The HELL? What, all the Jump icons were coming up on his turn?

over his six Cylon turns

...half of which were on that last jump cycle.....

So if Kat hadn't played that last EM, Chief would have made his Personal Goal?

I really liked this game but I wonder if this is one of those games that is fun in retrospect. Had the humans lost would I be saying right now that I didn't like it?

BSG

So if Kat hadn't played that last EM, Chief would have made his Personal Goal?

He didn't need anything more to fulfill that. There was also one viper destroyed, so in fact his PG condition had been fulfilled for 14 turns. He just never got round to spending an action to reveal it.

So if Kat hadn't played that last EM, Chief would have made his Personal Goal?

There were many times I was going to reveal it, but with all the crap flying around us, there always seemed to be more pressing things to be done. But I did stop fixing them. Had I realized sooner, that the final jump doesn't burn fuel, I wouldn't have cared a lot sooner. oddly, it was the Cylon who put my mind at ease on that one. Thanks RoboRomo!

Between the personal goal, the mutineer (if I get a jump card, I go to jail syndrome), and having some icky mutiny cards, it was a head scratcher at times, deciding what to do. Sometimes, I felt very limited.

On the whole, I had fun. Demetrius was an interesting distraction. I totally forgot about it by the end of the game, until you just brought it up again. I wouldn't mind another game or two with it in.

BSG

over his six Cylon turns, he cost the fleet 6 Morale, turned up 2 Cylon attack cards and buried no less than five jump icons.

Hot damn.

I think we can therefore directly blame Romo for the fact that the final jump cycle took no less than 13 turns, and cost 1 Fuel, 2 Food, 3 Morale (though Zarek got 2 of them back) and 6 Population.

HOT DAMN.

Oh, by the way, the final space battle: the three civvies in Sector 5 were 2 Pop, 1 Pop/1 Fuel and 1 Pop/1 Morale. And it was undefended at the jump.

SO CLOSE.

At game end, Treachery contained 22 cards - four over the usual maximum - including 9 Treachery cards.

Ha ha ha, yeah, all my ABMs started paying off in dividends eventually. That was fun.

The HELL? What, all the Jump icons were coming up on his turn?

Yes, actually. Nearly every time I got to choose between one card with a jump icon and one without one. It was fun! The game was on my side for a while, until IT BETRAYED ME.

D&D 5th Ed

Finally played some 5th Edition tonight. I was short on players for my Pathfinder game and was suffering from DM burnout anyway, so my brother threw together a quick dungeon for us to run through.

We just had the free Basic Rules and some monster stats from a playtest adventure, so some stuff might have been a little off, but it seemed to work pretty well.

We had a dwarf great weapon fighter, human rogue, human cleric and elf wizard, all 3rd level (we started at 3rd so we could give some of the archetype abilities a try) and played for about 90 minutes, which took us through some dungeon exploring and 3 combats (goblins, zombies and a pair of ogres). I was playing the human rogue, and felt the class worked pretty well. Being able to make a sneak attack anytime one of my allies had an enemy engaged made it feel like I was always able to contribute. My rogue had a pair of short swords, but I only attacked with the second weapon once or twice. Since sneak attack is limited to once a round, and the off-hand attack eats up your bonus action (which the rogue gets a bunch of other options to use it for) I was saving it for trying to finish off weaker foes. Tougher foes I was using my bonus action to Disengage to avoid reprisals and against the ogres with their ability to squish my rogue into paste, I stuck back and plinked away with my shortbow (and still got sneak attack because the fighter and cleric were in their faces.) All in all, the rogue was a lot of fun to play.

The player of the fighter had a lot of fun as well, even though at low levels there's not much difference between a 5E and 3E/PF fighter. But the fact he didn't have to deal with feats or having to decide whether or not to use Power Attack made him happy.

The player of the wizard had to duck out early, so we didn't get to hear his thoughts, but it felt like being able to consistently contribute with his cantrips and then occasionally unleash with a real spell when needed worked really well.

My brother ended up running the cleric, as well as DMing and didn't have any complaints, other than Turn Undead 1/day is kind of disappointing after being used to Pathfinder's Channel Energy. Being able potentially make the zombies scared just didn't seem worth the bother. The spells and fighting prowess were fine, though the crappier weapon selection and lack of 3E/PF style buffs kept the cleric from outshining the fighter or rogue, which is good.

I'll have to give it another try with the full rules and an actual designed adventure to pass a real judgement, but I like it so far.

Turn undead as a daily? That doesn't seem right. Can you use it more often at higher levels?

Yeah, the cleric eventually gets more uses, but it only tops out at 3 at 18th level. You can take a short rest (which takes an hour) to regain uses, but it just seems pretty blah, overall. You also get an alternative use based on the Domain you choose (Life Domain, which is the only one in the basic rules, gets a weak area healing effect) but it feels like a huge step backward after Pathfinder.

While Turn Undead is an iconic Cleric ability, it's not super useful until you get powerful enough to destroy undead with it, and at that point the undead in question generally have to be weak enough in comparison to the cleric that they're not really worth wasting the ability on.

I understand not wanting to allow the cleric to spam the ability all day long like they could pre-3E, but reducing it to a very limited use Fear spell that only affects undead is pretty lame.

Like I said, I think Pathfinder hit the right balance with Channel Energy where you get multiple uses that you can use to either hurt undead or heal your buddies. I may look into incorporating that into 5E somehow if I run a game.

it's been so long since I played tabletop that I am thinking in terms of DDO but when I play a cleric I love getting to totally rule an undead dungeon since the rest of the time all I really get to do is buff or heal.