Check in, ask any questions you have. This is where I will be laying down any questions of my own when given the chance to take a deeper look at all of you guys' sheets, but in the meantime just mingle or some s%~&. We've got a bit of time, I'm going to be taking a few days to assess who's in and know how I need to change elements of the first book just to adapt to the party chosen and such.
Reporting for duty. Thanks for the selection.
Hello! Thanks very much for the selection. I'm looking forward to this game (and playing Christoph) a lot.
Reporting in, and super excited!
Dotting in. Thanks for picking me! Looking forward to this.
Hey everyone. Reporting in and really looking forward to playing with you all! Thanks for the selection, that must've been a tough choice!
Exceedingly difficult choice. I had it down to about thirteen "finalists" when I had finally weeded it down to the ones I really liked, and on doing a quick count I started banging my head on the desk. This was not an easy bunch of calls to make at all. But for it, I feel we have an interesting party here, lots of very diverse and curious forms of horror and neuroses to prey on. I'll be doing a quick look-over everyone's sheets, and in the meantime, got a few things to lay down, ask, and just sort of throw out there.
-Please put your vital stats into the race field. Doesn't need to be super deep, just the minimum core stuff I might need to refer to at a moment's glance as the DM.
-To help everyone work a bit better as a group, please post a little bit about what it is your character does and their stronger points.
-Also just maybe introduce yourselves period if you want
-From now until your first die roll, you can make any changes to your sheet you want, so if you want to switch out a Knowledge point to help cover a weakness or what have you, it's all cool.
-If there is anything specific ruling-wise you might want to ask about, weird little exceptions or equivalencies, this would be the time to lay those on me.
-If you haven't already, please give the Horror Aspects a spin. You don't need to fill out all of them, but some quick-fire little bits to help summarize that aspect of things will make for easier reference than deep dive backstory wading every time I want to double check on something.
-May not be a thing anyone isn't already doing but please just make sure you have all your relevant info in your alias profiles. Preferably sheet at the top and then your fluff in some spoiler tabs, but anything works as long as it's easily navigable.
-Campaign info currently has the feat houserules and variant systems up for handy reference.
-I will roll out your saving throws, passive perception checks, and initiative at the start of combat. I'll do these rolls at my desk because otherwise a spoiler titled "SECRET GM STUFF DON'T PEEK TO SEE IF YOU'RE DYING RIGHT NOW" is kind of a big red flag by itself.
-Typos happen and I'm not going to be a dick about them because I am just the sloppiest f%!*er myself, but please make your posts look good with proper punctuation and formatting at the very least. I don't want the true horror of this game to be bad grammar.
-For initiative, to keep combat moving a bit faster here's an example of a fight.
Player 1
Player 2
Enemies
Player 3
Player 4
Player 1 and 2 can make their turns in either order depending on who posts first. Once 1 and 2 have gone, all enemies will make their actions. After they have done so, players 1-4 can post their turns in any order. Once done, the enemy team will act and we'll repeat. This way, a combat round should take somewhere in the vicinity of 24 hours at worst, rather than leaving specific turn order up for the possibility that everyone's free time and relative initiative rolls end up drawing things out longer.
Barring anything else I'm forgetting, that should be everything for right now.
Hi everyone! Agree that character introductions are a good idea so here goes:
Ellie is a conjuration wizard, so will be a helper (aka 'god wizard') rather than a combat blaster. She can summon meat shields, grease weapons out of people's hands, or trip them, that sort of thing. She has a reasonable amount of hit points for a wizard, but she's still pretty squishy so if someone can stand between her and the nasties that'd be great :-)
She also has a bunch of knowledge skills but no social skills so help might be needed there.
If any of your characters knew Professor Lorrimor well then they would probably have met Ellie already as I tied her backstory in pretty closely with him.
@GM Frightmare: I will put together some of the Horror Aspects in a spoiler on her profile later this evening.
Hey everyone. Extremely excited to play this AP and thanks for the selection!
Mihaela is a grenadier alchemist, so a bit of a mad bomber. At the moment she's pretty much stuck with bombs and a crossbow in combat, but I will be looking to expand on that a bit.
Skills-wise, she has knowledge arcana, local and nature, plus disable device, spellcraft and UMD, but like Ellie, no social skills to speak of. She's obviously also pretty good at craft alchemy :-) and sleight of hand.
She only met Professor Lorrimor once, but kept up a correspondence with him (teacher's pet trait) where they debated local politics, customs and stuff like that, so she might not have met the others before.
EDIT: I should also add that she's a tiefling, but with the pass for human racial trait.
Freija is a Shieldbearer Warpriest and she'll be the frontline tank of the group. She'll be doing some aoe buffs, but many of her slots will be reserved for buffing her defenses (and occasionally offense) and healing herself.
As for skills, she has excellent Perception and Knowledge: Religion. She also has Craft: Armor and Craft: Weapons, and will be ranking up spellcraft each level, since she plans to Craft Magical Arms and Armor later on.
As to Lorrimor, Freija met him only once, nine years ago, when half of you were barely teenagers.
Hello, everyone!
Sofia is a Medium so she can mix up her party role a bit each day. She isn't a very good combatant, but can shore up any gaps in spellcasting at least a little. Next level she'll be able to share her seance boon with everyone in the party.
Skills is probably where she'll shine. She has a pretty good diplomacy at +8, her Knowledges are arcana and religion, she has a good Perception and Sense Motive, Heal, linguistics, perform (oratory) and professions (fortune teller & medium). She can do a seperate hour long seance 1/day to get any skill for an hour/level, treating it as a class skill with max ranks. If she channels a trickster spirit, she can get two skills like that, but for the whole day. She also has access to occult skill unlocks. Ooo-oo, ee-ee, skillmonkey dance!
Sofia is Varisian, with a mystic/fortune-teller vibe. She was blinded as a child and her family lived with Lorrimor for a few months when she was 9-10ish (about 13ish years ago), while she was his Subject of Study. Lorrimor also put her in contact with people who could help her adapt to being blind, kept up correspondences with her, and was the one that told her about her psychic potential. Fear wise, she does not like fire.
Elisa is a rogue (Unchained) and can provide either ranged or melee damage. She's lived most of her life in Caliphas. Due to the Elephant in the room feat system, she is good at tripping and/or disarming foes so she'll probably be up front with Freija doing her stabby, stabby rogue stuff. One thing to note is that, because she is a dhampir, she gets hurt by positive energy and healed by negative energy, which might make healing a bit tricky depending on how the DM wants to rule it.
Skill-wise she's a lot to offer in different situations, like most rogues ;). She pretty good at manipulating and persuading people: Bluff + 8, Diplo +6 and Sense Motive +5. She's fairly stealthy: Stealth + 7, Disguise: + 6, Disable Device + 8 and Sleight of Hand + 7. She also has good Know (Local) + 6, Acrobatics + 7, Appraise + 6, UMD + 6 and is pretty Perceptive (Perception) + 7.
Like Ellie, she knew Prof Lorrimor pretty well as he taught her more about her condition (dhampir) and the creature (undead-specifically a vampire) that attacked her and her mother and, hopefully, kidnapped her mother, who went missing after the attack. She'd probably know Ellie pretty well if she also spent a lot of time with Lorrimor.
I'd be happy to tie my backstory in with others if they'd like.
@DM Frightmare: I'll get the Horror Aspects done a little later when I get back from work.
I'll be at work and a BBQ with my uncle tonight so I'll have to get things typed up either late tonight or earlier tomorrow morning. Do you have any other info you'd like on my race field, GM Frightmare?
I also thought it was a nice touch you changed your avatar. From a relatively docile tiefling-like woman to a screaming burning skull. :P
No rush on the write-ups, do them when you can.
@Christoph: Just your CMD. Just the stuff I'd need to quickly glance at in a combat post to know how a roll turns out. And yeah, I felt the avatar needed a change out; vampire bard is good for "come play in my game it'll be fun" but now you're here and now I can express that I am just screaming all the time always. No need to pretend any longer.
Should maybe add that at the moment Mihaela speaks Abyssal, Common, Elven, Infernal and Orc. Open to suggestions on changes to those.
Varisian is likely the second most common language in Ustalav, but most of us speak it, so no pressure.
Sofia has Common, Varisian, Hallit, & Aklo.
Christoph is a vanilla Inquisitor of Pharasma who is a member of the undead hunting Voices of the Spire order. He's primarily a ranged combatant but I'll have the ability to wade into melee competently if needed (buffs/judgments/bane). I can provide some limited buffing/utility spells/healing as needed. Given that we don't (appear) to have a full divine caster, I'll probably be contributing to the status healing/warding/etc game.
My skills are fairly varied. I'll be focusing on K(Religion) quite a bit (as I am a designated undead hunter in the Pharasmin Church) and will dabble in the other Knowledges (to turn on Monster Lore and to avoid stepping on anyone's toes). I'll probably be a secondary sneaky character (putting ranks into Stealth and having magic backup) and primary tracker. My social skills are limited to spotting liars and then scaring them into telling the truth but I should be fairly good at both of those.
Christoph was fairly close to the Professor. It seems probable he'd know Ellie and Elisa as acquaintances. For the entirety of the time he knew the Professor, his training would be ongoing so he would only have made the most intermittent stops to see him in Ravengro (on the way to track another undead abomination) but he did correspond fairly frequently.
Christoph speaks Taldan (common), Varisian (mother tongue), and Skald. I'll probably think about picking up Elven/Dwarven/Hallit/Celestial. I like the idea of Christoph wanting to master further languages in order pursue whatever research he can find on the undead (to better destroy them).
Any ETA on starting?
@Christoph: It makes sense that Christoph knows Elisa. As part of her backstory, Prof Lorrimor introduced her to a trainer who taught her how to fight the undead. Having read your backstory it would make a lot of sense if that was actually Christoph (if you're up for that) as they both live in Caliphas. Elisa is currently looking for the undead creature that attacked her mother, who went missing after the attack, so she would happily work as a contractor for the Voices to further this cause. You could be her contact in this regard too.
@Christoph/Elisa - agree that Ellie would at least have met you several times, and in Elisa's case, might actually know her quite well. Maybe the Professor brought Elisa along once when they knew the place they'd be exploring would be a trap-filled nightmare?
Given the scenario I will probably swap out Elven for Varisian since it makes more sense.
I didn't have any time yesterday to run through everyone's stuff or start things up but I'm eyeing later on today as when I handle all that and get us on the ground with a first post.
Okay first post is up, going to leave time for a little introduction space before we move on to the funeral.
@Ellie: That sounds good! Elisa would consider it part of her training for looking for her mother.
Edit: I don't know if anyone else is using HeroLab but I found this blog post that allows you to add the elephant in the room feat taxes to your character creation in HeroLab, which makes it a lot easier to build your character. Not sure if it will be of use to anyone else but I thought I'd say it just in case ;)
Edit: I don't know if anyone else is using HeroLab but I found this blog post that allows you to add the elephant in the room feat taxes to your character creation in HeroLab, which makes it a lot easier to build your character. Not sure if it will be of use to anyone else but I thought I'd say it just in case ;)
Cheers, that made things a lot easier.
As a herolab user, that is much appreciated.
Just a quick point: it's not a huge part of her character, but Ellie is firmly convinced that although the gods exist, expecting them to care about mortal affairs is irrational.
She's not militant about it, but it may inform part of her relationship with both Christoph and Freija. If she already knows Christoph it seems likely they've had this out and agreed to disagree :-)
@Elisa: I like having a tie-in there, but I'd like to propose that you probably were also trained by Kjell Sjogunsson. He's Christoph's mentor. My reasoning is that Christoph is a newly ordained Voice of the Spire, so it strikes me as unlikely he'd have been conducting the training. We can definitely say that we spent some time training together at Kjell's direction though.
@Ellie: Agreed that acquaintances seems like a reasonable starting point. :) Agreeing to disagree seems reasonable. Christoph's initial reaction would have been bafflement (how can you NOT believe that the divines are interested in us? Given the Starstone in particular?). He might have tried to argue at first, but his strengths are not in debate. He also would lack much of the knowledge to form a strong counterargument (particularly the scholarly kind that Ellie would likely want). This left them at an impasse and that's where we remain.
Also, I wrapped up the horror aspects. They're in my character sheet. I'm working on an IC post right now as well.
Horror aspects now completed for Ellie, too.
@Christoph - I like what you suggested, so I took it and ran with it :)
@Christoph: That makes perfect sense. I didn't want to suggest it in case you wanted a special bond between Christoph and Kjell. If you're okay with it though, that works out really well. How would Christoph and Kjell react to the fact that Elisa is a dhampir and semi-undead? I tried looking for something about how the Voices of the Spire would react to non-evil, semi-undead creatures but couldn't find anything. Maybe they were initially suspicious and stand-offish but Elisa eventually proved herself through co-operation with their undead hunting trips and through Prof Lorrimor explaining her situation?
I won't be able to make a full post until later after work. Feel free to move on to the funeral if everyone else has posted and you're all waiting on me.
If you're okay with it though, that works out really well.
Works fine for me. This is all fairly recent as he's only been training as an apprentice Voice for the past 3-4 years (leaving only time for a few short training sessions). As long as that works for you, we're good. :)
How would Christoph and Kjell react to the fact that Elisa is a dhampir and semi-undead? I tried looking for something about how the Voices of the Spire would react to non-evil, semi-undead creatures but couldn't find anything. Maybe they were initially suspicious and stand-offish but Elisa eventually proved herself through co-operation with their undead hunting trips and through Prof Lorrimor explaining her situation?
I was thinking about this one. Some initial skepticism seems probable, but I think the big tipping point would be the Professor.
Some particularly zealous scholars even contest dhampirs’ status as a unique race, instead viewing them as humans suffering from an unholy affliction.
I'd guess the Professor would take this view. Assuming that's true (or Christoph/Kjell believe it to be true), then Elisa is a human who's suffering from a curse. They'd want to find a 'cure' in an ideal world, but accept that she can be regardless. There may be some lingering vigilant wariness in case the curse starts to manifest more strongly.
Also, as far as the Voices go, there doesn't seem to be a lot of material out there. There's a blurb about them in Faiths of Balance (undead hunters who often wear a talisman to kill them if they take too much level-draining damage from undead to save their souls for Pharasma's judgement). When I built Christoph for a different game (that petered out), I came up with the fictional rank of Speaker (in full, that would be Speaker of the Voices of the Spire) which is meant to be a minor officer. I've not come up with anything else, but welcome anyone's thoughts. :)
Works fine for me. This is all fairly recent as he's only been training as an apprentice Voice for the past 3-4 years (leaving only time for a few short training sessions). As long as that works for you, we're good. :)
Yep, that fits in nicely ;). She would have been training/in contact with the Professor for the last ten years or so. The first couple of years would be spent with the Professor learning about the undead, her condition and how she could find out what happened to her mother. During this time she would be making trips with the Professor into old ruins, helping him with traps, etc. This is the period where she was likely to have met Ellie. Learning that the only chance to get her mother back is to fight, she would've asked the professor to put her in contact with someone capable of training her to fight the undead, which is where you and Kjell would come in. She would've spent the last 2-3 years training with you both and sporadically be making trips back to help the Professor with his expeditions.
I was thinking about this one. Some initial scepticism seems probable, but I think the big tipping point would be the Professor.
To be honest, the Professor is probably the only reason Elisa didn't succumb to her darker dhampir instincts. He helped her deal with the trauma of losing her mother and with the more distasteful parts of being a dhampir. He also helped by giving her a sense of purpose and usefulness by allowing her to help with his expeditions.
Gonna be home in ~30 minutes so I'll be able to post shortly thereafter.
Sorry I didn't post last night, ended up working a double shift. Reading the new posts and working on my post now.
@DM: would any of us have already known that Kendra was adopted? or was that an absolute bombshell?
I imagine Ellie would know because she spent so long traveling with him and being around him to a degree the others didn't; it's one of those "it's not a secret but we don't often talk about it and not everyone needs to know" kinds of things.
Thanks, that's helpful to know!
Gah, 24 hour neighborhood-wide net outage, sorry for the delay guys.
Quick heads up that I won't be able to reply until later tonight (~7-8 hours from now) due to work/other commitments. Wanted to post yesterday but didn't get home until very late.
@DM Just wondering how you're gonna deal with getting information for this. Is it purely going to be a library check as outlined in Intrigue or will we be able to persuade some of the locals/temple acolytes for more information on Harrowstone?
Can Elisa get into contact with the criminal element and persuade them using know(local)/diplomacy to provide the latest rumours/criminal happenings/potential hiring of thugs that criminals always seem to know in these situations ;-). Will the criminals know of this shadowy organisation that has suddenly appeared in their turf or have some foolish thieves tried to loot the ruins etc?
It's going to be kind of twofold; there is the professor's library which will have the info about the Whispering Way, but for local research there are other libraries, and while those checks will work as they are, you're also going to have to talk your way into getting the locals to like/trust you enough to let you even look into that information. But there are also things outside of research that can be arranged here; townsfolk who may know something, finding out how the professor was found and what happened there, things that aren't directly related to the knowledge rolls. Investigative elements. My only real worry about something like that is having half the party sitting cooped up in a room full of books for a week or two at a time after having made their rolls, while the other half of the party chases more active modes of investigation down.
As far a criminal element though, Ravengro has a population of a little over 300, and there isn't really a criminal element here to be able to talk to.
Great, thanks for expanding on that, it's really helpful for deciding what to do!
Makes sense that there's little criminal activity, I didn't realise that Ravengro was so small!
Looks like! Apparently there are no other volunteers to be Ellie's minion ;-)
Alright, I have put up a map of Ravengro in the campaign info, along with the locations you presently know. More will be added as you visit locations and meet the villagefolk. We've got thirty in-game days with this place and you'd better get ready for it, because the game doesn't really do too much with them but expanding the village is part of that whole "make more horror and f&#~ with things" bit I do love so much with APs. I've also added a section to note and expand on NPCs as needed, and to list out the current objectives that the party has at least talked about, just so it's all there and handy to keep on track. PBP is easy to refer back to with everything in post form, but it also works on a scale of time I know is more than a little prolonged, and even my weekly Kingmaker group appreciates having the chance to reference stuff so I figured I'd help keep things a bit organized and easy to call back to.
Thanks DM, that is super helpful for keeping track of everything!!
To clarify, can we all see/hear what you're describing from within the room or is it just Mihaela?
Everyone. If there is character-specific experiences/information, it will be tidily kept under a spoiler, or if it's like top level security clearance info, in a PM.
BTW, DM Frightmare - I'm very happy for you to make knowledge/lore rolls for me if it will keep things moving, so we can avoid time where I post a roll and then you post the results.
Hope that helps :)
Alright, I'll keep that in mind where I think the game might snag a little on stuff. On that note for anyone who ever wants to ask "What Knowledge can I roll for this?" I'll do your rolls on that front too for speediness's sake if you have the right skill.