Aubrey's Other Eberron Campaign - The Unbinding (Inactive)

Game Master Aubrey the Malformed

roll for hit-points: 1d10 ⇒ 10

Ya know, I'm realizing that one of the biggest limiting factors of the warlord class is that so many things consume a swift action.

Oh well. These fish can't be that much tougher than Kal...right?:P

I won't be around for the next few days as I'm visiting the in-laws.

Have fun.

Happy New Year everyone.

Sorry for my iffy posting, holidays were mostly preparing to get my father moved from Louisiana to Texas, then 3 days in an RV moving him.

Monday Night : No sleep due to Anxiety over moving him.
Tuesday : Pick up RV, Drive 11 hours from TX to LA
Tuesday Night : Sleep 6 hours
Wednesday : Pack up everything he owns into RV, Take him to visit brothers one last time, go by VA to get prescriptions (2.5 hours), eat Po-boys for lunch. 6PM Take off in RV.
Thursday : Arrive at Assisted Living Facility at 6AM. Get 1 hour nap, get up, start unloading RV. 9AM Get father into new facility. 11AM leave facility to take RV back to rental facility. Clean RV. 2PM Get home with lunch (first food since 4AM). 4PM Collapse.

So been a bit busy. Will get posts up later today.

Oi Aubrey, do you mind if I take my turn before Tal? I mean, we had the same Init but different fishes and he's busy while I, as a spaniard, work and do only the strictly necessary.

Lazy and proud of it.

I salute you. Please go ahead.

Life link doesn't heal HPs. It transfers damage. Five points of HP damage transfers from Cole to Tal. If we use your interpretation, Cole would heal 2 HP and Tal would take 5 HP, and Tal would never link to Cole, because it would be useless to link to him.

We'll get a ruling from Aubrey.

Even though it's mechanically flawed meta-wise, it would make an awesome story point in a climactic fight.

The Ruling:

Frankly, it looks like healing to me. I get that, from a certain direction, this doesn't look like a Conjuration (Healing)-type spell or effect. However, the warforged description is fairly explicit - supernatural effects that provide healing have half effect. If Tal casts a healing spell on Cole it has half effect. If Tal does Life Link on Cole for full effect, and then heals himself, that bypasses the normal requirement for half-effect healing for warforged and I'm not too sure how that's very different from a mechanical perspective from just casting a healing spell on Cole (I'm not too sure how Life Link + self-heal works for action economy, but even so I'm not sure that is much of a limiting factor). So I think it's in keeping and proportionate for Life Link to have half-effect on Cole. If that makes it "useless" is down to the players to decide.

Just my two cents, but I do find Tal "spending" 5 hit points to heal Cole 2 flavourful, even if costly.

I mean, how do Warforgeds work? There's probably some energy conversion with his life link, heat excess or some such technomagicky stuff that explains the effort and lost on efficiency.

That said, two for two would also be flavourful: warforged's inner stuff makes the life link weaker. Specially all that adamantite and inside crystals or whatever passes for Cole's insides.

That said, two for two would also be flavourful: warforged's inner stuff makes the life link weaker. Specially all that adamantite and inside crystals or whatever passes for Cole's insides.

That might be a reasonable compromise.

If it's 2/2 then I'm ok with it, although Tal would likely still not bother with the link, as it's not very useful on Cole. He'd be better off just casting spells on Cole or catching him in channels.

Yeah I would say 2/2 makes the most sense. At least Cole has bunch of HP so he won't likely need quite as much healing when in combat. And out of combat we can rely on warforged specific wands once we get into large enough settlement.(that is also in an area that warforged are prevalent)

I think Audrey's call is the right one, and for those same reasons.

And unless Tal has some experience Life Linking with living constructs, it makes sense that this would be coming out in-combat as it is. :)

Audrey.... Sheesh....

OK, 2 for 2 it is.

Hey, you try typing with only three mega-sized metal fingers!

please don't kill me

A new type of warforged - the warforged typist. Ten fingers on each hand.

Dang, it's not for lack of trying over here on fishy 1. :/

Ten fingered warforgeds? Get to work on it, gnomes!

Although if a giant intelligent crab can figure out how to type with just one claw, surly a three-fingered intelligent magic-robotic war machine can manage, right?

wont let me post in gameplay again. same error as always, it acts like i hit preview instead of submit.

I shot my bow with arcane strike, 12 to hit and 4 damage, so it is safe to say that my turn was inconsequential.

I think twelve hits if you're on the inside....

Okay so I am starting the loot discussion despite us not knowing yet about everything(I would guess that other than the longsword we are gonna know the rest with multiple people having detect magic and spellcraft. on said sword it might take a while and maybe teamwork if that is even possible.)

Oh and just a note you can assume that Wultram explains the function of each item he identifies.

Boneless leather: Sell this as soon as we get to town. only thing of worth in the entire item is +5CMD, if it was based on some decent armor instead of leather it might be reasonable to keep. But with how much it is worth I do not see any reason to keep it. In the mean time hand it off to someone who only has light armor profiency.

Goblin skull bombs: I say let's keep these, I am sure we will eventually come to a situation where they will be usefull. Hell if nothing else we could use them to create a trap. Hand them to the 3 people with best ranged attack modifiers.

Shawl of life: This is decent for it's price, problem is that it shares the slot with cloak of resistance, wich is pretty much mandotory item.(eventually) For now I say let's hand it to Tal, since he is our healer, since he is the most likely to come up from being near unconcious to functional and also it will give us bit of risk minimization when it comes to keeping the healer up.

Collapsible Tower: Sell it, because I don't think anyone has towershield profiency? And it is basicly double price for +2 shield, granted normally you also only sell for half so.... For now, who uses a shield?

not much i can do with any of it presently, except maybe that ring (which is good for literally everyone). If we do a roll-off for the ring, I'd throw my hat into the ring unless I was aiming for one of the items that are currently unidentified. We will see what comes of the other items.

EXCEPT

I have Retain Essence. I can magic most of these items into other items. I cannot yet alter Rings, Rods, or Staves.

Tal can use the shield, although he won't bother using the tower portion. We can sell it later.

Honestly, I spend the last couple of years giving you next to nothing. FINALLY I let you get some magic items, and you all turn your noses up. What's a DM to do?

Pretty much the same in every game, so don't take it personally. I build odd builds that usually don't need the standard treasure put out. After all, nobody puts out matched sets of three swords and a shield in treasure. :)

Funnily enough, most of the time I just hand out cash, particularly in Eberron since it has a more "commercial" feel when it comes to buying magic items, especially the lower level ones. Still, I had fun picking them, and I didn't want to get stuff tailored to the PCs as that would feel a bit silly in what is essentially a random haul from a monster's hoard. You should be able to exchange them fairly easily in the near term.

Yep, no worries. I don't see any issue with what we have. Especially as the party can essentially remake about half of it without even selling it.

I'm not opposed to the staff, seems like it would be useful for the party occasionally.

Shatterspike seems like good for Cole? Does he have Improved Sunder?

Cole's been a two hander. If he switched to longsword then he could use the shield too.

I like Rehil's curve blade. That leaves him two-handing also.

What about our other semi-martial PCs, Ashshar, Vaard, Tal, and Nalverren? Would they like to switch to sword and board?

The translating staff could come in very handy.

Tal is already sword and board. He could use the long sword for one of his hands, if nobody else wants it for now. However, he wont' have the feat free to take the improved sunder feat.

Honestly, I spend the last couple of years giving you next to nothing. FINALLY I let you get some magic items, and you all turn your noses up. What's a DM to do?

It's not that the items are bad. It is just that paizo can't price anything right. Speaking off:

Staff: price is about 15k, for the same value you could get a pearl of power for each spell level it holds. Doesn't help that 2 of the 3 spells are things that we are unlikely to need more than a handful of times in the entire campaign and the 3rd one ain't that much better. If we have people cabable of casting those spells, let's just get some scrolls for fraction of the cost.

Sword: Well if anyone intends to specialize in sundering then it might be worth it. Otherwise keep it around for now, if nothing else it is good for DR/magic.

Ring: Well this one is actually rather straightforwardly good. Bit on the expensive side given our lack of other AC boosters.(As in lot cheaper to have ring+1, amulet +1, armor +1 than ring+3). Hand it to someone whose AC is lacking and is a frontliner. Do note that since we are going towards civilization we can most likely produce whatever base armor we want soon enough. (aka most likely chainshirt/breastplate/fullplate)

not much i can do with any of it presently, except maybe that ring (which is good for literally everyone). If we do a roll-off for the ring, I'd throw my hat into the ring unless I was aiming for one of the items that are currently unidentified. We will see what comes of the other items.

EXCEPT

I have Retain Essence. I can magic most of these items into other items. I cannot yet alter Rings, Rods, or Staves.

Bolded relevant part. Could you explain how that ability works, not something I am familiar with? It certainly could change quite a bit on the sell department.

Oh and I should note that I am just giving my own opinions on the items at hand. While I do at least like to think I did decent-ish job on the matter. If someone has other thoughts or added ones would be nice to hear them.

EDIT: We should also come up with a way of dividing loot. It hasn't really been relevant so far since we did not have the option of changing any of it.

Nalverren can utilize the shield, now that I look at it. He just can't use its tower shield form without taking the associated crippling -9 ACP. Though, if i were using it in tower shield form, it would certainly not be likely to be a situation where i'd be trying to make dexterity checks.

That said, if Tal is melee-ing then s/he is likely to get much more use out of it.

RE: Retain Essence:
Basically, with this ability I can take the "magic" out of an item and use that to fuel the creation of another item. It requires 8 hours of my time spent with the item, and I must have the Item Creation feats needed to make the item.

For example, if an artificer with the Craft Wondrous Item feat recovers a Handy Haversack that he needs to convert, he spends 8 hours with the item to break down the item and recovers 1,000 gp worth reagents (the construction cost to make the item in the first place). Those reagents can then be used toward the cost of making any magical item, provided that whomever is making the item has the Craft Wondrous Item feat in addition whatever feats needed for the new item.

As a baseline, no magical value is lost. Aside from the time spent, it is more cost-efficient for me to, say, take the magical +1 Flaming off of some Longsword and put +2 worth of weapon special abilities on Cole's weapon. In that case, the only GP value lost is the original masterwork item that was drained, as that item is destroyed. That is a lost of 300-ish GP in value versus the typical adventurer thing where you sell the sword you don't want for half of market value and then buy one you like better for full price.

However, I do have a slight cost reduction for magic items. If I retain essence from an item such as a +1 longsword (it has 2000gp worth of enchantment on it) I'd get 1000gp worth of essence off of it. However, it only costs me 750gp worth of essence (due to a feat of mine) to craft a +1 weapon, leaving me with 250gp worth of essence to put toward the crafting of something else.

This might be enough to almost get us to wealth by level at some point in the future.

I can't retain essence from the staff yet, but if we sell it we are losing a lot of wealth in the transaction. It would be most beneficial in the long term to keep the staff until 12th character level when I can retain the essence form the staff. But if I get outvoted and the party really wants that wealth before then, well, I guess we will have to sell it.

Tal's already got a shield, and he's not a front liner. On the other hand, neither is Nalvarren. :) So it really just comes down to who needs it more. Tal would be fine lending his shield to Nalvarren if he takes the heavy shield, until we figure out what to do with it. Unfortunately, Tal's armor and shield and weapons are all consecrated equipment.

Then again, once he meets up with the church, they're likely to be extremely interested in that armor. Likely wanting to replace it with custom modern armor given that the armor is probably the oldest holy relic they can ever find.

Given we can basically make money off of making magical items out of other magical items, I have no issue waiting for the staff to be broken down at higher levels.

Just a note, if I were the GM, I'd say you can't get more than 750gp out of the items you make with 750gp (IE: No infinite enchanting material by making a +1 cape of resistance for 750, breaking it down for 1000, making it again for 750, etc).

yeah something tells me Aubrey isn't going to allow the kind of downtime necessary to manage getting what we NEED, much less trying to pull any silly shenanigans like that.

Also, if you read it in the strictest way, the ability already does that.

After the 8 hours, the item, including the mundane item the enchanted was original placed on, is destroyed and the artificer now has a collection of reagents with a gold piece value of the construction cost of the enchanted item, which is usually one half the base price of the magical item. See the specific magical item for any unusual requirements in its creation.

I'm not sure Vaard can use many of those items. I could possibly use the Shawl if there is abundant out-of-combat healing, since I don't have anything in the cloak slot. Vaard could definitely use the Boneless Leather, though. And the ring of protection that everyone can use. Probably would be best if I took the leather armor. Vaard doesn't have much use for a sword with his claws and teeth.

Vaard (and Ashshar) is going to get his Breastplate of the Dragon Turtle fairly soon. Anyway, didn't mean to derail things, was more a sarcastic comment than a complaint. Also, interesting about the Retain Essence. I'm not bothered about the item creation stuff - I'd effectively be stymying Nalverren's choice of feats. Plus it seems to me the main impact of Retain Essence is to mean you can create magic items out 'in the field', rather than having to go to the nearest big city to sell stuff and recycle it into other stuff. That seems fine to me too.

By the way, is anyone else struggling to get into the website - the links on the front page seem to have broken down? I had to search for my own name and take it from there.

I had no trouble this morning, but I have a shortcut straight to my campaigns page.

I've got no claims for this lot of loot. It's been very instructive listening to the discussion though.

I do think we should hang onto the staff for a while. If we're delving into the lost past some kind of translator could be handy.

No trouble on my end.

AS for the gear, none of it's specifically suited to Cole. He's been 2-handing fairly regularly, and Pooma's warmaul is likely going to be his signature weapon for the foreseeable future. :)

The longsword could be carried as a useful backup for when/if we need to bypass DR/magic, but if Tal can use it as his primary weapon, then I say go for it.

Also, sorry for my sparseness as of late. I've had some kind of flu or something.

Not sure about saving the staff. Sure we would 'lose' ~7500, but at level 12 that is not a whole lot, where as in our current financial situation it is rather sizable sum. However if people feel like saving it, I won't object.

As to the current loot, I don't really have any use for any of it. Well other than the ring, but using that on Wultram would probably be the worst possible choice.

But with Nalverrens ability, I am more inclined to just scrap everything we can and get stuff that is more ideal. How would that ability work, if you were working with someone? Or is it possible at all? I am just thinking that I could take crafting mastery at next mythic tier to share some of the load. (as eventually 1k/day will become a bottleneck)

BTW: You guys REALLY want Tal to get a Phylactery of positive channeling

Tal'Va'Nocht wrote:

BTW: You guys REALLY want Tal to get a Phylactery of positive channeling

I can't create that, I am not a 10th level cleric. I could probably bypass the cleric bit via Use Magic Device, but not the level bit.

But keep reminding me, eventually we will make it happen. 11k is still rather a lot at our level. At 10th level, remind me and I will make it priority #1.

@ Wultram: Working with another with this feat is possible. It is only slightly more limited than usual. As an example, if I destroy a magic sword and get 1000gp worth of reagents, I could actually hand those reagents to someone else. They could use them to craft anything they are capable of crafting, the restriction is that they must also possess Craft Arms and Armor (because the reagents came from a weapon made with that feat). If they possessed Craft Wondrous Item but not Arms and Armor, they couldn't use what I provided from the weapon I destroyed.

Additionally, anyone using the reagents I provide would not also get the 25% discount that I get off the price of the completed item.

While I COULD scrap everything but the Ring and the Staff, it DOES take 8hrs per item to scrap it and then 1 day per 1000gp of any item I craft from the materials. That is a lot of time, and I take a 50% penalty to progress if I do these things while we are marching around (though in the airship should be fine).

RE: STAFF: I figure that it DOES have some utility and MAY come in handy (admittedly not every day) so that is why I erred on the side of keeping it to turn into essence later when the utility would definitely be gone.

MISC: the ability is really useful for tailoring our items to be things that actually suit us without having to go to town all the time. Even my discount isn't likely to counteract our Scrooge-McDuck-ian level of payments so far.

You don't have to be that level, or a cleric, you just have to increase the difficulty level to create it.

Crafting and Bypassing Requirements: What crafting requirements can you bypass by adding +5 to the DC of your Spellcraft check?

As presented on page 549 of the Core Rulebook, there are no limitations other than (1) you have to have the item creation feat, and (2) you cannot create potions, spell-trigger, or spell-completion magic items without meeting their spell prerequisites. So racial requirements, specific spell requirements, math requirements (such as "caster level must be at least three times the enhancement bonus"), and so on, are all subject to the +5 DC rule.

So, the DC to make it goes up by 10. It's not a hard DC in the first place. So all you really need is 5500gp worth of reagents, and some down time. Someone casting guidance on you repeatedly wouldn't hurt.

I DO need to know just what the disposition of the items will be. Then I can know how much I can scrap, and then I can know how much I have to play with in terms of reagents to entertain requests.

armor: scrap it
bombs: scrap em. really bad if the attacker misses
shawl: Tal
shield: Tal (for now?)
sword: Tal (for now?)
staff: keep as party-use for now, scrap later
ring: good for everyone, Wultram expressed that it is least useful to him

If someone has something they want more, feel free to scrap the sword/shield now and make them. For that matter, scrapping them and enchanting some weapons/armor wouldn't hurt, and wouldn't take much time for +1's across the board. Spread the love out a good bit with that much reagent.

Indeed. Especially because the juice from the blade could power two armors of its same enchantment level by virtue of the disparity in weapon and armor cost alone. That said, we all do need a magic weapon if we cannot cast damaging magical spells.

Basically, I just need to know the consensus. I'm not gonna try to do stuff unilaterally.

The armor and bombs can go first, and honestly by the time I get done with that, we will probably have been in a few fights. If we don't get anything magical out of those fights, then we can consider using the sword.

Ooo. I missed the DR on the armor. And then I realized it was DR 5 / slashing and piercing. It's not often you get bludgeoned to death.

Sorry, Aubrey. I don't mean to be ungrateful but I'm going to stick with the MW chain shirt.

Wow. That goblin bomb is perfect for Golarion goblins, the stupid crazy little gits. I was going to say that I'll take them, 'cause I won't miss, but Tenro's right. The downside of these is ridiculous. If they really are that fragile, I'd expect them to break while stored in a backpack. Adventuring life's not easy.

The sword is worth more than +1, the other ability is a +1 as well, so it's a +2 sword.

Same with the shield, except it's a +3. That's a lot of crafting materials to boost our existing armor/weapons.

Chime in people but here is some very rough ideas on how to use essance.(and money when that comes relevant) This is in order.

1)Get people relying on physical attacks a single +1 weapon. Mostly because of DR/magic is fairly common and not unusual to see high numbers to go with it. Market price is 2k a pop. For Vaard amulet of mighty fists since he uses natural attacks.

2) A wand or two of CLW. Idea being that if Tal runs out we have something to fall back on. Market price 750/per

3) Armor +1 and if used in fighting style +1 shield. Market price 1k/per

4) Cloak of resistance +1, +1 to all saves for 1k per is a bargain. And around this level it starts to matter if you are using good or bad base save.

5) Ioun Torch for everyone not cabable of casting light or doesn't have darkvision. It is 75gp for hands free torch what is not to like.

6) If we have something left, then let's start looking at spesific stuff people could use. Like say metamagic rod extend minor to help with buffs.

I wouldn't like to be greedy and request two +1 weapons, as Ashshar is a switch hitter, but if possible by all means it would be nice.

Failing that the bow probably would benefit more from being +1.

The rest of the items don't fit any of Ashsar schticks, so essence or selling sounds actually nice.

And regarding the mighty ring of protection, whoever tends to get beaten the most should wear it, which I think is Cole.