[PFS] Iron Gods - The Divinity Drive - Sanctioned Content by GM Upaynao (Inactive)

Game Master Upaynao

For future reference, GM, you might find the polyline tool easier to work with to make area templates. I made some templates that I can stick in and resize as needed (anyone's welcome to snag that document).

Thank you Miranda, I was going NUTS trying to draw that template.

Hugo, for my own edification (and because I'm too pressed for time to actually look at your character sheet and figure it out myself like a big boy), can you explain what combo you are using to swift summon?

It is not "swift" just a "faster" as a standard (instead of full round) with Sacred Summons feat. Tried to short-hand it in my post but obviously not as clear as I hoped.

Sacred summons allows clerics to summon as a standard instead of full round for creatures with type exactly matching their alignment.

Ring of summoning affinity adds To his list of creatures and those have Lawful type (instead of the usual good or evil types of summoned azata or devils on the standard lists)

Thanks Miranda for the recap - as I also was confused on some of the circled figures on the map. Hugo was trying to prevent the bomber from getting help...but that may have backfired. :(

Ok, thanks for the explanation; I might actually use some of these ideas myself

Whew. That only took about an hour.

Yay, Seeker play!

No kidding, there’s a lot to keep track of, your efforts are much appreciated! It’s great to be able to play this character again and I’m finding this an excellent intro to PbP.

Agreed!!!

On Thursday I will be flying to Taiwan for a conference and will return the following Wednesday. I expect that I'll have internet access but my posting may be sporadic over this time. Feel free to bot me as needed.

Does the resilient sphere block the western doorway into our current chamber? And if the ceilings are 15' tall, how high are the doors? Normal 7-8' or all the way to the ceiling etc?

It does. Doorways are normal in size.

Quick question for Nalshene and Urko: How do those spells interact with unattended equipment, of variant levels of sensitivity? Just asking.

No I'm not going to screw you over, but I want to know for my subsequent descriptions.

Also, I trust you all to play fair, and if I trust you to play fair, I trust you to assist me in times of confusion. In the instance of the resilient sphere, go ahead and feel free to place the sphere on the map in future. This goes for all area effects under your control.

Anyway, I knew this was going to be a super crunchy update; thank you Urko for putting a spoiler with effects for everyone targeted.

I looked into the Shadow spells a bit and it sounds like, for unattended objects, the spell is just 60% real, meaning it has a 60% chance for any given object to be affected by it.

Prismatic spray only affects creatures.

Heading to the airport for the long journey home (about 24 hours of flying). I'll likely have internet access along the way but in case I don't I may not be online again before Thursday morning (EST). Feel free to bot me as needed.

Lot of stuff coming up and I don't quite have the time for an update today, just got out of the lab. Tomorrow I'm out for most of the day, so it's looking like I will update the thread on Friday evening.

I'm going to plug Shifty's Race for the Runecarved Key and enjoin you to share any theorycrafting you might have on the new Shifter class, Shifter's Edge and so forth.

Is Shifty running Race for the Runecarved Key on the forums?

Yes!

I must be blind. Where is recruiting being done for that?

Edit:

Disregard, I found it.

FYI I'll be out of town starting later today until Sunday evening for PAX Unplugged, and I don't foresee myself updating my games during the con. Please feel free to bot Nalshene. Use any of her spells that you see fit, just don't get her killed. :)

Also on the chorus of momentarily AWOL-- off to a convention for a weekend. Bot me as needed, but it's most likely that I'll spend at least the next round in a full-round kyton CDG.

I'll try and update later today, but it'll be either super late, or not at all; in which case I'll update tomorrow.

I'm back form PAX Unplugged! Getting caught up now.

As an FYI: The upcoming week is going to be a personal nightmare. I would expect a solid update on Friday, but no more than that.

No worries. About the same for me this week as well.

Thanks

Good luck with it all!

I will be away this weekend from Friday afternoon to sunday evening. I will have limited ability to post.

As a heads up: I will be taking finals starting a week from today. After that I will be traveling abroad until the 3rd of January, with the biggest interruptions on my flight out of the US on the 18th and on my way back on the 2nd-3rd. Now it will disrupt the game, but I will try my hardest to keep things updated as best I can.

Thank you for putting up with this!

Don't worry about it, real life comes first.

I will be away from this afternoon until sunday evening with limited internet connection.

No worries and good luck with finals.

Yep, no problems there! This has been great so far (and we appreciate how much work running a high-tier table like this is!!)

While I did hope I'd split you up, I didn't expect Urko and Nalshene to go into the main atrium. I think you can handle this though. I might be the intelligence behind these bad guys, I'm still rooting for your success!

Just as a quick update, I am about to board my flight. I had hoped to worm in a post yesterday or this morning but... Anyway, expect me to reply ASAP. Which should be sometime on the 19th or at the latest the 20th.

Have a great trip!

travel well, like a wine

Three things I've learned from you so far from you all:

-Quickened spell is mind-bogglingly useful. Spell as a swift, doesn't provoke? Well then.
-Limited wish has some pretty serious caveats... Unless you're not a wizard, in which case we cackle at your opposition school shenanigans.
-54 AC is a number, and you don't even need to gimp your offense. I'm not even sure how I'm going to deal with you and make you sweat bullets.

Merry Xmas to you all!

...-54 AC is a number, and you don't even need to gimp your offense. I'm not even sure how I'm going to deal with you and make you sweat bullets.

Well, I'd argue Miranda is definitely not the best at direct DPS offense, that took a bit of a hit by making her a Dex-tank. There are other level 15 fighters/martials that could easily crank out twice or three times her damage in a round I imagine. But yes, I did get minorly giddy when typing 54 AC, a lot of that's due to the very generous party buffs in place!

Merry Christmas to all. This fight/game so far is ridiculous, in the best ways.

The biggest thing about high level play is the sheer number of buffs which help out. Parties which co-operate on these are orders of magnitude more effective than those which don't.

I can't see high-level play happening with players that haven't caught on to the whole cooperate schtik the Society has going on. Although, if it did happen, I'd like to hear the stories of how that turned out.

If they have played together a lot yes. For random PFS groups, it can be very variable. I have heard one or two stories of people running Unleashing the Untouchable at Gencon with random pick up parties which produced some very variable groups.

It also really depends on what you bring to the table. We have a group full of full casters, that makes a huge difference. I have run quite a lot of high level play, multiple runs of EotT, the All for Immortality series, Moonscar, Witchwar etc and caster flexibility has made the difference in all of them.

Being well prepared also makes a massive difference. I recall in one run of a seeker adventure no-one had a counter to deeper darkness (at levels 14-15). Not an oil of daylight or a heightened continual flame between the lot of them. The wizard ended up having to burn limited wish to deal with it.

Ouch re the limited wish burn. I try and keep as many consumables on hand to deal with things as I can even among my martials, but inevitably I forget a thing.

And yes, having a table of casters makes SUCH a different. I played Tomb of the Iron Medusa with Miranda-- table was her, a monk, a rogue, and a bard. We really, really felt the lack of a wizard or a cleric, let me tell you, even though the bard was fantastic and pulled the entire casting weight pretty well. Of course, he also burned through... I want to say 13K in scrolls? It was wild.

This is my first go at this level (limited wish etc) in play, so quicken actions and the many lasting buffs definitely make a bigger difference. At this level a table with no full level casters would be painful.

I can't even imagine a table at the 14/15-ish level without casters. It would just be a total slaughter.

Just as a warning, in case I go dark: Wi-Fi connectivity is tentative here at best and we just reestablished it after a 12 hour lapse in connectivity.

If I'm not replying I've probably gone dark for reasons beyond me. Things should return to normal on the fourth of January.

Just to be clear; while you can absolutely go ahead and blast the fake Hugo, so far nothing distinguishes it from the real Hugo. Nothing. The only weirdness is that he is touching Marduk and it is visibly hurting him, and by the way he (Hugo) is acting, he looks alarmed out by the entire thing. Of course you can sense through the deception with Sense Motive. But otherwise it seems to all the world (except Marduk) that you are blasting a team member. Is Nalshene comfortable with potentially blasting a team member?

This is the one section with high-level illusions, and to an extent you need to play along if this is really going to work for this table. So before I go any further on that front, I would like to see if you are willing to go along, and act while disregarding the really damn obvious over-the-table information at your disposal.

@Agata:I had to go back and recheck my math. Interestingly enough, because I was under the impression you were super-dead, I didn't roll the rend damage due to you on the second kyton. Whoops. Oh well. Your life total should be...

Emphasis mine.

I just wanted to take a moment to point out the difficulties that come with the argument you've proposed. That being, the alternative is that it's nearly impossible for the PCs to puzzle out an illusion without interacting with it enough to trigger a will save and then hitting that will save DC. It should be possible from seeing things that don't make sense to determine something's wrong. In this case, I'd say Hugo ignoring the downed kytons and chasing after Marduk with a mysterious non-spell touch attack would be a pretty huge indicator that something is very wrong.

Before he was interrupted, Hugo was actually planning on going over to the area with Marduk to cast heal on the Deacon so it is not totally unexpected for him to come looking to heal. However, the real Hugo would not know how injured Marduk was.

Sure but it would be fairly clear from what is happening that Hugo is definitely /not/ healing Marduk. It doesn't take a sense motive check to notice that someone's touch is causing harm.

I would agree - once he causes damage to party members, whether you save vs illusion or not, those witnessing it would treat him as if he was charmed/confused/possessed or no longer under his own control.

Nalshene also has a high spellcraft score. She would recognize that he’s not casting any spells and has some kind of nasty touch attack.

I kind of want to call shenanigans on this one. Shouldn't it be clear that Hugo is the aggressor? Nalshene arrived in time to see that Marduk is withdrawing and Hugo keeps attacking. We may not be able to hit the sense motive check but what's going on should still be clear.

Alright, so let me preface this that you are in the presence of the headpiece of this level. That you have separated has actually played to this encounter's strengths. In that respect, given your level, your experience as players and the number of hours you have spent playing your respective characters, it is unfortunate that you do not have a good defense against this. But Seeker play isn't easy insomuch as I have experienced it. And in spite of this encounter's difficulty I am certain you will prevail.

Now, having said that I recognize the difficulty of what I am asking, I will also point out that there might be a misconception of what I am asking. His bluff attempts aren't made to deny that Marduk is getting less healthy every time he is being touched nor that something fishy is going on with Hugo the Second. However, the bluff checks being made (to which I should be applying a fairly big penalty from the get-go, but that can be solved as soon as someone tries to go against them) are made to disguise the violent nature of its strikes, and make believe that whatever it is is casting a touch spell.

So while you certainly can assume that it's a shape-shifting creature from the lightless depths, it could be that Hugo has just fallen victim to a curse of some sort, or a domination/possession. You should do something to stop Hugo, if it is Hugo, from harming Marduk and vice versa. Consider this: if Marduk is the one possessed/dominated/impersonated (possession would make sense, if Hugo is casting Cure Spells and hitting some sort of ghost/phantom/insertundeadhere), then weighing in on Marduk's side would set one up for some real bad times.

So yes Marduk/Feral, I agree 100% that given the information available, Nalshene or Narshala should be able to piece that something isn't right; there's no sense motive in seeing that you are being hurt tremendously every time you are being touched, nor should it be too difficult to determine that the gestures are elaborate enough to be a spell but there is no spell being cast, once Nalshene asks for specifics on the spell or lack thereof. And I also 100% agree with you, she should do something, because you are probably going down very soon. The part I take exception with is the leap from "something is deadly wrong here" and "kill Hugo #2". Perhaps this leap is due to a combination of a lack of communication on my part and the medium, as my descriptions might not have been adequate to fully convey all that is happening with Hugo #2. Looking beyond that though, something should be done to separate the two of you physically, and failing that, some out of the box thinking to determine if one of you is a doppelganger would probably go a long way. That is my thinking, were I in your shoes.

Now, I want to make sure we are all both on the same page and have either agreed on a middle ground or come to an understanding before proceeding on with gameplay; I carry little desire to continue on with a game where people are ticked off or needlessly frustrated. So, if you feel that my argument fails, or that there's something I have not considered, or am not understanding, please go ahead and (patiently) explain further what I am not quite getting. I will do my best to reflect further on it and, if warranted, alter my stance. And while this goes primarily for Marduk, this is open to anyone else who wishes to.

I would also prefer to resolve this quickly, but if we need to spend time on making sure everyone is satisfied, we will spend the time. Like I said, all things being equal, I'd rather run a game where everyone is eager to continue and not dread my latest post.

My conclusion is that the illusion has done its job. It allowed the fake Hugo to get in close and get some free licks in when he would have otherwise been obliterated from a distance. I think saying the illusion has run its course and allowing the PCs to act as normal would be appropriate - blasting the traitor - at this point.

I think, in play by post, it’s not practical to expect a player to ask all the relevant questions to piece together what should be obvious to our characters. If you’re interested in moving the encounter along, trying to give the illusion more effectiveness than it needs is running counter to your purpose.

I would say we are adequately prepared for this sort of this ploy at our level. Our preparation is being resilient enough to endure a traitor’s sneak attack with the intention to stomp flat the attacker immediately afterward. Skill checks scale in a way that it’s impossible to completely deny a dedicated opponent.

A simpler question would be, can those of us in the surgeon room actually hear the yelling going on in the other room? Do we have line-of-hearing communication? If so, at this point hearing Marduk yelling about a Hugo out there would result in us going 'wait... we have a Hugo in here...' and would provide in-character evidence on the side of "Hugo is the fake/problem/issue here, not Marduk perhaps being charmed or dominated."

I haven't had Miranda chime in verbally to this effect because I wasn't sure if we're actually able to hear the yelling, given conditions.