Defense of Brookside

Game Master caster4life

GM? You still with us?

Yep. Honeymoon is drawing to an end. Will post Sunday.

Just to clarify on the map, those hills count as steep slope for the sake of movement and +1 melee attack bonus against downhill enemies.

GM, I have some rules questions about Ghost Sound.

1) Illusion spells allow a will save if interacted with. What constitutes "interacting" with a sound? Is simply hearing it enough to get a save? Does the creature have to move to the apparent source of the noise and find nothing there before getting a chance to save? Does it depend on how plausible the sound is for its environment? E.g. the sound of a wolf growling in the bushes gives no save, but the sound of a pipe organ playing in the bushes allows one.

2) Ghost Sound is close range. As a level 2 adept, Cyrus can target a spot within 30 feet of himself. Suppose he sets a ghost sound at the edge of that range. Is it heard outside the range, or is the sound limited to the area within 30 feet of him?

3) Also on the topic of range, suppose that Cyrus sets up a Ghost Sound 30 feet away from him, and then walks away. Does the sound cut off the instant that he steps away? Or does he only need to be within 30 feet at the time of casting, and then it persists for the duration of the spell? (Two rounds, in this case).

GM, I have some rules questions about Ghost Sound.

1) Illusion spells allow a will save if interacted with. What constitutes "interacting" with a sound? Is simply hearing it enough to get a save? Does the creature have to move to the apparent source of the noise and find nothing there before getting a chance to save? Does it depend on how plausible the sound is for its environment? E.g. the sound of a wolf growling in the bushes gives no save, but the sound of a pipe organ playing in the bushes allows one.

2) Ghost Sound is close range. As a level 2 adept, Cyrus can target a spot within 30 feet of himself. Suppose he sets a ghost sound at the edge of that range. Is it heard outside the range, or is the sound limited to the area within 30 feet of him?

3) Also on the topic of range, suppose that Cyrus sets up a Ghost Sound 30 feet away from him, and then walks away. Does the sound cut off the instant that he steps away? Or does he only need to be within 30 feet at the time of casting, and then it persists for the duration of the spell? (Two rounds, in this case).

1. The text of ghost sound indicates that any who hear it get a will save to disbelieve. Circumstance bonuses or penalties may be added depending on the choice of sound.

2 and 3. The range only applies to where you fix the source of the sound. You can then move away and the sound will continue. Additionally, creatures will hear the sound based on their distance and perception score. There don't seem to be incredibly clear rules for specific volumes but consider the fact that you can make a sound as loud as 8 yelling humans and the perception DC to hear a battle is -10 and DC increases by 1 for every 10 feet of distance between sound source and hearer.

Also, I would like to nominate Hirda for the dwarfiest dialogue award after she said Sir Fox 'n' Sir Rocks. Amusing and entirely within character.

Ah, so it does! I missed that clause before.

I'm assuming that anyone who passes their will save still hears the sound, they just recognize it as fake.

EDIT: Ugh, I keep forgetting to change my "Post As" setting from my usual account to the Cyrus alias! At least I caught it this time.

Yep that's correct. No problem.

You guys have probably noticed that I'm helping keep track of which enemies have been hit by showing how much hp they've lost, what conditions they have, etc. This isn't intended to mean that the orc warleader, for example, is at -13 hp but that he has lost 13 hp out of an unknown total.

Hey guys, it seems like we're moving a bit slowly lately. I haven't been posting anything new because I'm not sure whether or not you guys are done at the camp, want to rest, want to RP this interaction more, etc. If we're just waiting on Hirda to get things moving a little more briskly, that's fine. She'll be back in a few days. But if you have any more poking around or discussing to do at the orc camp, let's go ahead and do it.

Sorry - been a rough couple of days here in the home office. I'll post some advancement tonight, too.

I'm not upset. I was just trying to see where we were. :) Hope things go well for you, Vors.

Oh yeah! At home parenting is where it's at. Except for the random screaming. never know when it'll pop up.

Yeah I have a ton of nieces and nephews and my siblings love parenting except for the crazy parts... Good man. Hopefully you keep making those will saves.

OK, a bunch of random questions from me that are occasionally going to be somewhat ridiculously specific:

1) How much do your PCs want to get "a share" from the orc warband's spoils? Some of those items just need to be returned to their respective owners, but others might need to be used for funding the defense of the town.

2) Presuming that we can send someone to Astin to recruit help, is that a location that would provide help based on taxation, or are we going to have to buy mercenary teams to come out and serve?

3) GM, as we look into getting help from Astin, would the Ultimate Campaign rules on Teams from the downside section be helpful to consider, or would you prefer another avenue? Also, on the world map, is Astin the port town, and Rush Junction the other one, here in the Bishopric of Helm?

4) GM, story wise, would you consider letting Vors' oldest son have a level in Expert, instead of Commoner, to reflect the time that Vors would have taken to invest in that particular child's rearing and training? If not, I understand (it is kind of a backwater town), but he would be training an heir to take over the family business. I think this would make more sense than having a level in Warrior.

5) Are the forest trees close enough that we could reinforce the palisade by getting that lumber up to the town? What would that take?

6) I'm guessing we'll have to spend some level 1 feats on Martial Weapon Proficiency (Longbow) to take advantage of the ones we got off the orcs, right? Presuming there isn't a master weapon crafter in town, of course, who could churn out a pile of crossbows for us.

I feel like I'm going to nerd out a lot on the details of putting this defense, but I'm glad most of you are, too. If I get overbearing, just put me in my place. :)

Thanks, team!

I think Cyrus and Vors might have butted heads a little at this stage; but Cyrus got himself nobly killed, so that's not an issue. Mel is definitely not the type to take point, and will happily yield pride of place to Vors.

Mel has no claim to any of the loot from the orc warband; she didn't help in the fight.

Cyrus' parents Alex and Sofia Lem still live in town. They will want his body and personal effects once someone breaks the news to them. A share of the loot would be cold comfort at best, and they are pretty likely to refuse it altogether if it can be better used to keep the townsfolk safe.

Mel hasn't shared the information she learned with those Knowledge checks just yet, but she will soon.

I rather doubt there is time to recruit mercenaries. It's a two-day walk to Astin; a good rider on a fast horse could probably shave a bit of time off that, especially if they're willing to kill the horse to do it (and assuming they don't get waylaid by orcs on the way). Then once they get there, they have to get access to someone who can do something, persuade them to do it, and then there's the time needed to assemble any troops and march them to Brookside -- call it a day to put the expedition together, and another 2-3 days to reach Brookside.

It sounds like the orcs hit Rush Junction 8 days ago, and they're here now. We should by all means dispatch a rider to seek aid, but I don't think we can count on them showing up before the orcs assault Brookside.

Regarding producing weapons -- no time. Mel is a bowyer; she has a +11 on Craft (Bows). But if we go with RAW crafting, it'll take too long:

75 gp for a longbow = 750 sp
DC 12 to craft a regular longbow
+10 for a rush job
She can:
- Take 10
- Get a +2 Aid Another bonus from a townsperson
- yielding a 23 per check

23 * 22 = 506 sp
506 / 7 for progress by the day = 72 sp per day

So, 10 days to make a single non-masterwork longbow with no strength rating. A light crossbow would be slightly faster -- at the base DC, a week for one. A rush job would be DC 25, which she can't hit reliably without another +2 from somewhere, but if that could happen it would only be four days per light crossbow. At that rate, it's probably not a good use of her time.

On the other hand, she's got 50 arrows on her, and can make more at a rate of 60 arrows per day assuming she has an assistant and doesn't do anything else.

If there is a reasonably competent smith in town, may I suggest caltrops? It shouldn't be hard to churn those out in job lots -- they're basically two nails twisted around one another so there's always a pointy bit facing up. The would slow down the orcs a good bit, which gives us more time to shoot them and makes it a lot easier to run away if necessary. Of course, this is contingent on having a good place to put caltrops down, which depends on the physical layout of Brookside.

Along the same lines, Cyrus used a lot of his starting wealth on 10 bear traps. They were mostly for flavor, and he left them in his house rather than lug all that weight around. But they could be deployed in a similar way: staked to the ground, covered with leaves, and so on.

GM, there's an existing palisade, but it's in bad condition. Perrin has Mending. Would it have any beneficial effect on the existing palisade if he walked down the wall using it on weak spots? It has a ten minute casting time and doesn't repair a whole lot of damage per casting, though.

GM, here's a die roll, because the private messaging system doesn't support die rolls for some bizarre reason. I'll tell you what it's for via PM.

1d20 ⇒ 11

EDIT: Oh, and someone needs to tell Goodwife Higgins that her husband apparently got eaten by a trollhound, according to the correspondence we found on the orc shaman.

Speaking of whom, we need to have a chat with him and find out what he can tell us.

@Vors- 2. Astin is likely to send out a force if there is proof that orcs threaten an economically important target. They might send out a force just to repel orcs from their lands even if the target were not economically important. It would likely take a good number of days for a force to reach Brookside, however, as pointed out by Mel.

3. Interesting suggestion. I'll have to read those rules when I have a bit more time. In the meantime, players can describe interactions in batches "e.g. I trained 8 villagers in the toughness feat" and make a single relevant check to see how well they succeeded.

4. Yes that's reasonable. Each player may detail a few relevant npcs in town that they are related to, if they wish. Let's just keep it to level 1 npc classes and only 2 or 3 npcs per player.

5. Yes. It would take some of the tools and harnesses for such work which could be found around town. The amount of gaps in the palisade would probably require around 20 man-days to fix, with the use of 5 mule-days.

6. See some of my response to Mel.

@Mel- I think I miscommunicated to you in my post. The orcs entered the Bishopric 8 days ago. They seem to be on their way to Rush Junction but were raiding around Brookside for supplies and slaves.

I dislike the mundane crafting rules in pathfinder. They are extremely slow compared to magical crafting. I understand that it is difficult to produce 100 gp of crafts per day but people with a few levels under their belt are special, dangit. So if Mel can hit the rush job DC, she can craft 100 gp worth of bows per day. For every point she is below that DC, decrease the amount of bows down by 25 gp per day.

Perrin's mending can shore up some of the weak spots of the palisade that are still standing.

Thanks, both! I was hoping to have more time to look this over yesterday, but with the site outages it was impossible. I'll try to update tonight with more thoughts.

Yes the site outage was quite a pain and is unfortunately pretty common.

Yeah, it's much too common. If I were a Paizo higher-up and we had an outage almost a full day long like yesterday's, I'd be breathing fire down the necks of my tech people. And they wouldn't get a reflex save, either.

Okay, now that we have a map, Mel has a suggestion which she will discuss privately with the others.

I'm looking at the list of 13-years olds, and I see 1 dwarf, 1 ratfolk, and a bunch of humans and halflings. I propose we take the dwarf, the ratfolk, and two humans. They all get trained in Skill Focus (Perception). The two human kids get their bonus feat trained in Alertness.

Then we stick them in the watch tower with a signal whistle (those are like 5 cp in the APG if I recall correctly), with instructions to watch for invaders and start blowing like the dickens the instant they see an orc.

They'll be on six hour shifts, with the humans during the day and the dwarf and ratfolk kids taking the night shift because they have darkvision. Yeah, it's only sixty feet, but still. The more warning we get, the better.

At 13 (equivalent) they're old enough to understand the situation, and probably responsible enough to do it, particularly if someone sits them down and says "People's lives depend on getting warning; that's your job."

Using the teens for this will also free up able-bodied adults for other tasks that require more strength.

We should also distribute signal whistles to other people, just in case.

The only use Perrin really has for the orcs' money is crafting scrolls, and at this point the main limitation on that is time. If the party's okay with it, he might take 75 gp tomorrow morning to make a scroll of invisibility.

Ooh, would those modified crafting rules extend to alchemical items as well? If Perrin grabs a masterwork tool from his lab and gets aid another and guidance from Pebbles, he can make the rush DC for acid to start brewing up flasks to distribute among the town. I figure even commoners have a decent chance of hitting touch AC, and with a bunch of them throwing at once it could be really effective.

As for Astin, it's 20 miles away, right? If mules have the stats of ponies, then they should be able to hustle at around 8 miles an hour and get to Astin in a pretty short length of time. Whether the rider would be able to find help once they get there, of course, is another matter entirely.

Oh, and what's the Lesser Rush river like when it comes to transport? Would it be feasible to send someone rafting downstream to warn the Rush Junction?

Perrin doesn't have mending prepared right now, but he can cast it once as an SLA and then prepare it in the morning. Let me know if you guys have any other creative uses for his spell slots - the adept list is fairly limited, but I have full faith in our ingenuity.

Yes alchemical crafting gets the homebrew acceleration too.

Mules can have pony stats.

Without a knowledge local, nature, or geography, one wouldn't know too much about boating down the rush to Rush Junction.

Mel, I don't think any of what you said was a question to me but it all sounds reasonable and good. You guys can say anything in here but just declare what you're actually doing in gameplay.

Sometimes I find tracking the “To Do” lists for campaigns to be a little tricky.

I made a spreadsheet to help. It’s nothing fancy, but might help us settle down on what we most want to accomplish.

Mel, I like the idea of training 13 year olds as watchers. Makes perfect sense, and 6 hours is enough time that they shouldn’t have trouble also helping their families if they need to. Plus it divides evenly!

Perrin, I’ll have to take a look at the list to give you a better idea.

GM - thanks again for all the answers to the bone questions!
2) Well, depending on how we do, maybe our campaign will change names to “The Defense of Astin”! Seriously, though, yep, it still makes sense to send a runner to get the help we need, even if it might arrive late. If nothing else, it makes sense to Vors IC to make sure the word goes out that barbarians are coming up from the south.

3) Works for me!

4) Thanks! I probably won’t do a crazy stat-out of what he can do, but the extra skill points will go a long way. The reset of the family (spouse, 3 other kids) will also be Commoner 1.

Also, thanks for your flexibility on the craft rules! Another way we could say it is that the were already works in progress before we met Mel or Perrin, and these checks are just to finish them off for use. Either way, it works for me.

Time to sleep, but I’ll try to get an IC post up tomorrow. I do have a big presentation to give next weekend, so I might be a little more terse during the coming days, but I’ll make up for it the following week when I go visit my family with my toddler and they help with more of the childcare.

Hope y’all have a good week!

Yeah, it's much too common. If I were a Paizo higher-up and we had an outage almost a full day long like yesterday's, I'd be breathing fire down the necks of my tech people. And they wouldn't get a reflex save, either.

I think it might of been the hosting service they have that was the problem,

GM, I have a question about your units of measurement. You said:

The amount of gaps in the palisade would probably require around 20 man-days to fix, with the use of 5 mule-days.

Does that mean if we throw 20 able-bodied adults and five mules at the problem, we're done in one day?

GM, I have a question about your units of measurement. You said:

Quote:

The amount of gaps in the palisade would probably require around 20 man-days to fix, with the use of 5 mule-days.

Does that mean if we throw 20 able-bodied adults and five mules at the problem, we're done in one day?

That’s also how I read it, and - if it’s the case - definitely something that Vors would support.

Yes that's correct. The palisade isn't completely down. It just has some gaps.

To clarify, the man days and mule days must be expended simultaneously in a 4:1 ratio. So you can't have 20 men work one day and one mule work 5 days. The work must be done in increments of 4 man-days and one mule-day. Currently, the party has two mules they captured from the orcs. The third belongs to Mrs. Higgins. There are a couple other folks who own mules around town: Namely the Noltons, the Golightlys, and the Gristners. I'd like to RP those interactions so we have some RP to do while all this planning goes on in the discussion.

Oh good.

Several things:

1) GM, it would be handy if we had links in the Campaign Info to the Brookside map, the spreadsheet of villagers, and the loot list. I keep finding myself combing back through the gameplay posts hunting them down.

2) I'm super-glad that the palisade is an option -- I'd initially read that as something like "It's going to take 20 days to fix the palisade" which would have made it a lot less practical.

3) How long will it take to train villagers? That is, for purposes of giving them feats. The retraining rules from Ultimate Campaign suggest 5 days, but that doesn't seem practical for this campaign.

4) How about skill points? Craft is a class skill for commoners -- Mel could take some more of those 13 year olds and teach them to make arrows. With 1 rank + 3 for a class skill, they can take 10 and succeed on the check to make some arrows. It undoubtedly wouldn't be as fast or as good as Mel's work, but she's going to be busy working on bows. With the revised crafting rules, she can produce 3 shortbows per day. Sadly light crossbows are not an option -- they fall under Craft (weapons) not Craft (bows).

5) For that matter, what weapons do the villagers already have? Presumably at least a few of them hunt occasionally, and there may be others knocking about as well - maybe ancestral relics from great gran-dad who fought in the Great Big War, you know.

1). Good idea. I'll put the links under a Brookside section of campaign info.

3). Depends on how well you train them. I'll have players make relevant rolls in gameplay that are both related to the charisma of the trainer and a relevant skill of the trainer. Bonuses for describing particularly good training ideas. The better the combined check result, the faster people will learn. For a given check, some will learn faster than others. For example, it would take some awfully nice checks to teach 10/10 villagers a feat in one day. The more time and the better the check, the more villagers will learn the feat.

4) Each PC can stat out 2-3 npcs that they have interacted with in thematically appropriate ways, e.g. Vors' family members. Has Mel taught anything about crafting bows to any of these teenagers? Or have they watched her at work?

5) I'll detail who has what weapons in the npc sheet.

Nope! As per her backstory, she really hasn't engaged closely with anyone in the town at all. But she certainly has a compelling reason to start doing so now.

The lack of a previous relationship will doubtless make things harder.

Yes I thought that might be the case. Let's see if any of the children have an aptitude for making arrows. A great way to supply ammunition for fun in the woods, I'm sure. Target practice, hunting, etc.

Any aspiring bowyers?: 1d100 ⇒ 88 Yep!
How many?: 1d6 ⇒ 5

I'll add this to the sheet on the notes of the relevant teenagers.

Excellent. GM, here's a d20 roll. Expect a PM shortly.

1d20 ⇒ 14

EDIT:

In fact, here are two more.

1d20 ⇒ 2

1d20 ⇒ 8

This wouldn't be necessary if the dice tag worked in private messages. *grumble*

Sorry to not advance further tonight, all. My wife leaves town for a big interview tomorrow, and we're slammed getting everything ready. I'll update tomorrow. Peace!

More dice for the GM!

1d20 ⇒ 11

Other players, Mel and Vors are having a fascinating interaction. But feel free to let me know what your character is doing while this is happening.

I think we'll be wrapping up before much longer.

Yep! I'm all set. Drinks all around.

It occurs to me that we haven't specified what we're doing about the prisoner overnight.

Yes I was wondering what I was going to hear about that.

Hirda and Noln's son Lemuel, and his wife, probably have a rank or two in Expert. They also have a young kid or two.

Nice banter between Mel and Vors. It's a little difficult to strike the right balance between organizing plans amongst ourselves, and moving the action along, all while operating in character and with RL time constraints. I have no problem drawing out the RP session until we're satisfied with our joint decision making. Unilateral actions are okay by me as well, as long as we can back up a bit if needed.

SOrry for my delay all - family stuff to take care of the last day+. Will post again in a bit this afternoon. Thanks!

Not a problem, Vors. I'm not impatient. Sorry if it feels like I'm rushing you guys to post sometimes. I'm mostly just making sure that you guys aren't waiting on the GM, which would be no fun since you already did that for a couple weeks.

No external pressure felt! Only internal motivation :)

Perfect. :D

@GM: Remind me if the prisoner is conscious or not, or if we need to do something to wake it up from it's injuries. If Vors needs to wait until the next day to do anything, he will hold off on the interrogation and just sleep. Thanks!

He healed off the non-lethal during the night. It's morning now.

GM, surely the shaman healed both lethal and non-lethal during the night? Nonlethal heals at 1 hp per hour, and he should also have regained 1xhit dice normal hp just from resting.

Let's not send a messenger to Astin quite yet! We need to interrogate the shaman first. The messenger will need to know what we find out from that so that they can tell Astin what to expect.

It also occurs to me that if we send a mule to Astin, then that reduces the mules available for work on the palisade. We've only got 3 according to the spreadsheet. I really, really wish Animal Messenger was on the Adept spell list so that we could send messages to Astin and Rush Junction that way!

It's vital that we figure out how long have we got before the orcs attack? If they're coming now, today, then that's a very different scenario than if we've got days to prepare.

Yeah, I wasn't planning on having them go right away, I just wanted to make sure we had someone ready when the time came.

As for the mules, I took this post to indicate that in addition to the three mules listed on the spreadsheet, we've got the two we recovered from the orcs, plus one more belonging to somebody named the Gristners. That would mean we could send one to Astin and still have five left to work on the palisade.

Perrin can't cast animal messenger, but we know the shaman can. If we manage to bully him into cooperation, we might be able to force him to cast it for us - with several people ready to stab him if he tries casting anything else. Probably not worth the risk, though.

Sorry to delay the intimidate roll one more post, but I just realized that it might not speak common. If not, this could get tricky... or very very funny!

He does, in a basic "Me no coward" sort of way. You heard him do it in combat yesterday.