Time wise everyone should be posting once a day at least unless they've told before hand, it's more for the three page sprint over two hours between two/three people. I'm probably the most guilty of that

Two pages and 5 players to move forward 24 h-wise sounds good.

A question:

In past games you played, what happened in a hostage situation? Like in the campaign, Elsara as a javelin to her throat. If the orc was to plunge the javelin into her, what would happen mechanically? I checked the grapple rules and all that is supposed to do is a normal attack roll with advantage. However, that seems a bit... illogical. Obviously someone getting stabbed during a struggle isn't the same as someone actively plunging a knife into someone he is holding. Even with the advantage to the roll, it doesn't seem right.

Since I'm new to DnD, I'm asking what happened when these situations came up in your past games (as a player or dungeon master). Did the hostage just die outright, did they take guaranteed damage? Did they take critical or max damage? A little help please?

haven't come across it but it seems like a situation were you wouldn't use the combat rules. it's like if you stab somoene in there sleep (in game...) they wouldn't just recieve an attack damage, they would die. i would think here, depending on what happens, elsara would probably go to 0hp and bleed profusely from her throat, requiring someone to stabilise her

I'd say that Elsara is effectively helpless in the hostage situation, so perhaps work on the Coup de Grace auto crit rules?

Wow, just rolled a "just in case required" roll. Nat 1... I'm stuck there :-p

Not to worry. I wouldn't have allowed another roll until the combat started (If it started).

How do you guys want to do this?

The plan in my head at the moment is for Folki to edge forward (pretending to give his backpack over) and then attack the captain and rogue to free Elsara (using the backpack as distraction and then shove the captain into the rogue, tangling them both up), meanwhile Skriiod take the back two with his flame breath (his "fire starting kit") and Gendan, Val and Gym take the sides. 

Everyone ok with this?

I know OOC planning isn't really realistic but I didn't want to pounce without consulting

Yet another situation where I was thinking "If I was 1 level higher I'd be able to do something right now..."

Also note to self: Elsara really needs to think about putting Mage Armour up whenever the group goes travelling.

I think OOC planning is realistic... sort of. Your characters live in a dangerous world so they are far better at handling these situations than all of us combined. In that sense, OOC planning could stand for quick thinking on the character's part.

I'm just assuming that as soon as this happens everyone judges the situation and can kind of tell what the others will do. For instance Folki walking up with his backpack: the others know him and know he's very reactionary, he's not going to just give in, and so know that they are about to have to rush the others and will place themselves accordingly.

Hey everyone, I'm back from the road trip. Time to start reading up on what I missed

Welcome back. The lady we were commissioned by was the "werewolf"! She exploded! Elsara's a hostage of some orc bandits! Caught up!

Read the attack plan and let us know if you're happy to go ahead with it

Oh, I'm aware of the werewolf thing. Would have really liked to have dug into that, since Gym would have been interested but I wasn't here and we're well beyond that. The plan of attack looks good to me

On the werewolf thing, there was nothing further to find in the house. Just the story about the stranger who turned up at their house. If Gym wants to a religion check etc. im sure the DM will allow a retroactive one

Can confirm. I will allow retrospective things.

Well, lets find out what Gym knows then.

That roll could not have gone better!

Hopefully one of us gets an early enough initiative to make use of the two prone bandits, because they rolled annoyingly high :)