GM Erich's Salvation Of The Sages (Subtier 7-8) (Inactive)

Game Master Thereus, Silver Crusader

Time isn't really an issue at this point. 15-20 minutes for the cures.

Ru would be happy to try and craft some more cures.

How badly did losing Nikomedes hurt us here? Especially with him being a skill monkey type.

Seems like 5 people hits a poor spot between the 4-player adjustment, and a full team to fight what looks like a very tough fight.

Good question. I'm guessing we made a lot of bad choices on the way over to the sanctuary. I still don't know what the point of that initial mindscape was besides handing out negative levels. Maybe we were supposed to go to the library and get some clue from the bones to prepare ourselves to handle them, or maybe we chose all of the wrong doors and missed vital clues.

All I know is that if Taharl throws a fireball at Cirri and she fails her save Cirri is KOed. Hopefully waking up the sages does something cool.

Its Amenopheus tossing the fireballs!
We need to stop him, but no one's trying to wake him up yet.

We don't even know what's involved in trying to wake one of them up... Riddy's the only one that entered with enough actions left to try in the first round... and the GM hasn't mentioned what it takes yet.

Oh, Amenopheus is tossing hot fire, I see. That explains the 3 spells this round.

Riddy is now disabled at 0 HP, so he will need some kind of healing to be more effective. Cirri has a wand of CLW but she's going to be in melee real soon.

Good job on squishing the paladin, btw- this is gonna be tough enough without him.

I do wonder if we'll need to smash the jewels in some way- but first thing's first! Badguy go squish now!

I suspect we need to do something about the sages trapped in their mindscapes. It sounds like Tahari is controlling them. So either we need to enter their minds and snap them out of it, or if we can't manage that, we may have to smash the sage jewels.

Yep. If we can’t wake them, next action for Ru is going to be to try and smash the jewels to see what happens.

The gems seem to be helping the bad guy, maybe? They are flashing when she does certain stuff (like when all Ru's bomb damage went away). Smashing her first, might not be doable.

This feels like a video game boss fight =)

A little bit of behind the scenes.

Obviously losing a player in a 6-player game is never good, but I mitigated it somewhat by not pushing Amenopheus' descent into madness as hard on you. Mechanically, if you would have asked him to explore his memories five times in the exploration part of the scenario, the DCs for his spells against you now would have been 3 higher. It could have been worse by the way, if you had asked any of the other sages to explore instead of him (and used their memories five times), they would have joined the fight against you as well Amenepheous (as the ritual leader). Also, I made sure you got all the clues to make the cures (without that this scenario has the possibility for perma-death for your characters).

Getting rid of the cloudkill this next round will be good for you. Hopefully I don't roll another 4 on the CON damage. And Cirri and Loxx both have figured out the two alternative ways of dealing with the jewels and thus the sages (it will be skill checks in their mindscapes by the way). Very fateful indeed, do you save the sages or the jewels? It's a strange "combat" in that having extra-strong martial characters is not a guarantee of victory.

You realize that Tahari is very strong (offensively and defensively) when fully utilizing all the jewels. Some have compared this scenario to the Waking Rune in difficulty, if you are familiar with that.

Unfortunately, I hate to say it, but it's going to get a bit worse before it gets better. Two more ugly surprises when I update everything for the 2nd round. A little busy at work atm but I will update when I can today, definitely by tonight.

The poison cloud is are own fault.

We got a scroll of life bubble we just seemed to forget about.

Would have a 18 hour duration divided among however many folks, could easily have still been active now if we used it before the ritual.

I just want to say that I think our GM is doing an excellent job. It's the adventure itself that I question. I recently started running this for another group, so I've at least skimmed this section of the adventure in the past few days. I think they undervalued the adjustment to the CR of the encounter from the sage jewels.

I know I wouldn't have brought a con-dumped barbarian if I'd know it was a 'hard mode' type of scenario =)

But I always expected Sickly to die horribly, so this plays well into my vision of the dwarf's inevitable fate! I am mentally prepared!

Sometimes you have to fight the good fight. That's why we're Pathfinders.

...it's also why I hold onto 9 PP and try to keep 4K cash lying around :P

So what's our gameplan here?

Do we try to just kill all the monsters?
Do we free the sages?
Do we smash the Sage Jewels?

I don't care what we do, as long as we pick a plan here.

Hassam for example has Perform (Oratory) and can easily lecture Dharia out of her trance. Cirri has good magic analysis skills and can probably help Amenophorus.

Or Cirri can focus on smashing the jewels.

I say we wait and see what happens once I break the diamond sage out of her trance. I think I succeeded on my rolls. If it’s helpful, then maybe trying that again with another sage will be the plan. If not, then I’m going to start busting gems, as there is some connection there between the gems and that ghost’s crazy power.

We need to stop Amenopheus from blasting us every round.
We are losing the war of attrition.

Someone with some skills needs to pop in there and try to break him out... but the only person who could do so this round was Cirri... and she's now napping.

Actually, where exactly are the mindscape entrances? I was thinking they were where the sages images were... but Amenopheus just moved... did the entrance move with him?

Can we guess what the gems are doing? Might help us prioritize somewhat.
As well as track what skills work in which.

Diamond (Tahanekepsu) - FREE! glowed when she healed the acid damage.
Sapphire (Amenopheus) - (unknown) But we're getting nuked!
Topaz (Dhiara) - (CMD, K:history, K:religion, Perform (oratory), do lots of damage)
Amethyst (Sinuhotep) - (unknown)
Emerald (Torch) - (Diplomacy, Heal, Sense Motive, Survival)
Spinel - (?? Fetch went in, did he learn anything that might help?)
Onyx - (unknown) glowed when she cast her two spells in the first round

Hmm... guess we haven't gained as many clues as I thought! =)

But, right now, only Sickly and Hassan are close enough to enter a gem and take a full round action to free someone (if Torch or Dhiara)
The rest have to move more then 5' to reach an entrance... depending on where those mindscape entrances are.

The entrances are the sage jewels themselves, which hang around their necks, so yes they move. Except for the two on the tables, of course.

The only two that have flashed are the diamond and the onyx.
The mindscape sages imparted no other info

If I can get to Topaz, I’ve got good skills to help there.

I’m making a move to Topaz. If the rest of you try to hold off the ghost, I’ll work on trying to free Topaz and sapphire next and see what happens. Hopefully a freed dragon Mage threatening the ghost will help us turn the tide.

That was a huge save, Ru!

Do we care about Topaz, from a priority standpoint.
That seems a poor choice.

We need Amenopheus to stop blasting us! Especially since we're conveniently all bunching up so he can get us all.
Perhaps Ru would be better there? He and Hassan have the best skills... and Hassan can 5' step and get to Topaz if it really matters (which would give him a full round to try to free her now, instead of next round.).

Looking at the Sage stat sheets the GM provided... seems like a the lich or Amenopheus would be helpful, just from casting dispel magic, or fireballs not aimed at us =)

Torch doesn't seem like he'd help that much, dunno how the monk would fare vs a ghost.

I’m hoping that after deactivating a few of the jewels, there will be something major happen to power down the ghost.

And I can’t get to Amen this round without getting eaten up with AoOs, I don’t think. While I’m moving away, if I could get lucky and free another one, before moving around the dragon to him next round, with my move action.

Ya, getting within a 5' step of a moving target is problematic =)

edit: Oh hey, Tahonikepsu to the rescue! A lot easier to deal with 5' steps when you are a huge dragon with reach =)

Loxx has the scroll of heal we found earlier, which will be a huge help.

Uhh, I need to make an important Fort Save, one second...

And I roll poorly. I'm dead. Good luck guys.

58 HP at level 8 with 12 Con
-15 from 3 Negative Levels
-16 from Poisonous Cloud's 3 Con loss
= 27 HP Max

-10 from a botched ritual (probably my terrible K. Planes roll)
-35 from a Fireball
= -18 HP and 9 Con

Or not, turns out the cloud moved away from me before I needed another Fort Save! Woohoo!

Another thing to remember is that in Pathfinder you don't subtract damage from your score, you take a -1 penalty to the relevant stat bonus and everything it applies to for every 2 full points of damage. So having 3 Con damage is always the same as having 2 Con damage. It doesn't actually change your Con score, and thus doesn't change when you die. Ability drain on the other hand does subtract directly from your ability.

"Constitution: Damage to your Constitution score causes you to take penalties on your Fortitude saving throws. In addition, multiply your total Hit Dice by this penalty and subtract that amount from your current and total hit points. Lost hit points are restored when the damage to your Constitution is healed. A character with a Constitution score of 0 is dead."

Oh wow, I did not know that.

Although not dead (it was the word 'expose'... that confused me too for a moment) ... I don't think you're at -2
58/58 normal
43/43 after 3 negative levels (5/level)
33/43 after ritual damage
25/35 after 2 con loss from cloudkill
-10/35 after fireball

Though Cirri avoided the 3 con damage from the 2nd round of the cloud, due to being out of it, none of us avoided the 1st round, which was 4 con damage (but she saved, so only took 2... the GM didn't mention that we still took half on a save so you may have missed that, but did include it on the init tracker). So your max and current hp both decreased by 8 for that, as indicated in the quote Loxx included above.

But your con is still 12 for calculating when you die... so after you fail to stabilize this round (going to -11), you are dead next round, if no one can help you by then.

Oh, it's Cloudkill, not Poisonous Cloud. Yup, I'm at -10 here, I missed the 2 Con.

Cirri has a wand of CLW on her, just sayin'. Normally I wouldn't be too worried but I might be the best person to save Amenophorus.

Does anyone have a way to stabilize Cirri this round, before she dies on her turn?

I could attempt a heal check with Sickly, but not sure if I can while raging, and only have a +5... (and presumes I'm not suffocating in a moment)

If someone else can, and I make the save, I think I can smack the ghost again, and possibly interrupt the div... (the later's spell is likely to kill Cirri anyway, if we don't)

Loxx still has the scroll of heal, but that's too many actions (move, pull out scroll, use scroll.) Riddywhipple is in a similar position where he would have to move up to me, grab CLW the wand and then make the UMD check (he's also staggered anyway)

Ruprecht is helping Dhaira, while Hassam is also at low HP and fighting the divs. I do have a boon that would let me cast Aid on myself, but it requires a Swift Action and I got fireballed before I thought of using it.

I think we're just out of actions and time here. Unless I manage to roll a 20 next round.

Give her one for me, Sickly. I was planning to transform into a harpy and give chase as I expected her to fly away, but...

If someone else doesn't have a better idea, I can stabilize with my wand and hope I am still up next round to use the scroll.

I'm one checkbox short of sharing my increased hp before death part of my scarab sages card :(

I'll get Ciri this round.

Thanks Hassam!

That's... that's a good one, Sickly.

I've been waiting to do the 'pull the medlance out of the wrist sheath and grow super large as a move, to reach someone who thought they were out of reach' trick, for ever!

The fact I got to reenact the whole 'shot of adrenaline to the heart' scene, from many a movie, to explain the save, was an unexpected bonus.

We'll see if I missed something and it all falls apart. =)

Glad I made the save vs the dazing sphere (barely!)... that would have cut the whole thing unceremoniously short.

That dazing flaming sphere is messy, messy messy... I gotta put that spell on my wizards, because that's an incredible control tool.

DM:

And Sickly, you are da real MVP!

That was an amazing post and a superbly tactical action. Bravo to you.

Mechanically, each attack (or combat maneuver, or spell) counts as a separate "check" and is not totaled. So for this interaction, three bombs is ok, but the damage for each would need to reach a certain threshold to be effective.

question: I know each of the gems with sages attached have the little mindscape entrance thing going on. But do the unclaimed two?

They don't create a mindscape with no sage mind to attach it to, do they?
ie: can we even turn off whatever juice their giving the ghost, without smashing them?
___________

And Ru, describing the action is half the fun!

Hate to be that guy, but I'm the GM so I have to be that guy. :(

Tahari is too high, unfortunately. (You=10' plus your 20' reach = hit up to 30' vertically) She is just beyond that at 30' elevation even if you were directly beneath her.

and

Core Rulebook:Combat "You only provoke an attack of opportunity when you begin casting a spell, even though you might continue casting for at least 1 full round."

But Sickly could still disrupt the div's spell with his attack (forcing a concentration check she'd almost certainly fail). I'd need to move you slightly toward the div though because of height differences again. Squeezing and cover, but I'll use your first roll so it hits.

----------------------

The two unaccompanied gems do have mind-scapes (Fetch was briefly in one even).

After Ru exited Tahonikepsu's jewel successfully, the similar light next to Tahari's head seemed to dim. Smashing is an option, too.

30' up, and can reach 30'... seemed right. 8( Was no table to stand on? =)

As to the div, if it's all he can reach, I guess... though still seems too close (it's almost in my no hit area)

(Didn't realize the full round casting only provoking at the start thing. That's new to me! Been doing that wrong forever! Oops.)

So much for my dramatic moment!

I realize now what an idiot I am. I completely forgot I had a spring-loaded wrist sheath. I should have put the scroll of heal in it.

Remember, she is 15 feet horizontal and 10 feet higher than your corner, though. That puts her just under the 20 foot away mark for reach (thanks Pythagoras!) from your 10x10 body.

Z-axis plus angles hurt my brain.

@Loxx, we all make mistakes. For example, Sickly reminded me ghosts don't fly at 60 they fly at 30. So she is in range. Sickly has a fateful choice to make on who to smash with his attack.

oh, oops... ya, saw it, responded...
The ghost was his focus, unfortunately.

Aw man, just noticed, we've all clumped up in fireball formation.

Probably why the GM is asking about left over move actions =) The fiend!