Episode 9: Eels, why did it have to be eels?

[Brave Sir Robin]

Don't have much to say about this one, what did people think?

Has anyone eaten eels in real life? 

My personal opinion is that the game got even better beginning with the next episode after this one, though I am yet to hear it.

[Oneiros]

Absolute gem of an episode for puns (and good all round too, especially for the world-building). Probably the funniest episode to date - genuinely laughed out loud at several points. In particular, Bertie's pun on 'brilliant' was awesome :-)

Not eaten jellied eels before, the look and texture are very offputting. I've had eel cooked Japanese-style (unadon) which is tasty. It's supposed to be a very nutritious fish.

Couple of questions:
a) Is the concentration check to disguise spellcasting (when Hamed cast Message in UnderLondon) a house rule? My thought is that if you're going to use a check to do that then Disguise (with Dex instead of Cha), Sleight of Hand or Spellcraft might be better suited.
b) Am intrigued as to whether the item choice for Bertie of a reskinned Everburning Torch rather than a Stone of Light was simply a cost one?

[Brave Sir Robin]

I am not familiar with stone of light. Do you have a srd link?

[Oneiros]

Hmmm, don't worry - looks like this is a memory mix-up, it's not an official item but a custom thing we almost always had.

Effectively, it's a Minor Wondrous Item of a gem with the Light spell (or as I remember it from 2E, Continual Light ;p) but Light is a 3rd level spell, so you're not going to afford a 5th level character doing this for you at this point. The primary advantage is that it wouldn't be permanently gone with Dispel Magic, which an everburning torch is susceptible to.

[Alex Newall]

Thanks! I hadn't noticed the everburning torch will get annihilated by dispel. I am going to ruin James' day with that one.

Regarding concentration to disguise casting, in the Psion rules it explicitly covers casting powers and hiding the manifesting. It describes it as a concentration check and they even list the DC modifiers. It seemed best to just transfer that across to arcane given it was already balanced. That said, I will probably stack checks in future. I.e. Concentration to manage to cast it and then a stealth/ disguise check to see how unobtrusive it is.