The Father of Waters

Game Master Fighting Chicken

Istiel will use her remaining two actions this round to take an alchemist flask and a dose of paste from the haversack.

Oios- i don't think we need to explode the house anymore, we can apply the paste to the flasks instead for extra kaboom.

So you're using the vortex to attack and not block, correct, and prepping to bomb the s#@+e out of the swarm (which tells me also that you're not using the vortex to block).

That means, of course, that the swarm can enter the hut...

How big is the swarm and how big is the hut?

We're working in abstractions here, but basically, the hut can fit everyone (it is a circular structure roughly 8 "squares" of area). The swarm is moveable, consisting of ten 5' squares.

There's plenty of room for you to attack it with explosives and not get hit by backsplash, and it has plenty of size to get into the hut.

But the swarm will completely fill the hut when it gets inside right?

Yes, it actually fills more than the hut, but it could squeeze inside for simplicity's sake.

I guess it is up to Naira what happens with the vortex.

We could try to DPS the swarm, just know that as soon as it touches me, I will not be able to hold my vortex any longer due to the concentration check required, and am likely to fail my saving throw and become nauseated.

I was going to leave it on the door to stall as long as we can, will we get no more benefit from another round of stalling? If not, I'll direct it right into the swarm on my next turn.

You'd get a benefit from leaving it this round - the swarm can't get into you.

I'll proceed with that in mind.

Moving the vortex just before we throw explosive and flammable objects through it might be useful ;P

For the record, Imix planned to put some paste on wooden furniture (I assume there is some?) and then use that as an improvised "on fire" weapon in further rounds. Out of actions this round though.

So it seems like

1. The rest of us are going to ready actions to hurl paste enhanced bombs when Naira moves the vortex.

2. Naira moves the vortex.

3. Bombs fly

4. Drazan keeps swinging away

Maybe later when the swarm comes in we all move out and one of us shuts the door. That way a fifth of the swarm will be outside will the rest will be inside, maybe that will help us divide and conquer a bit? Then we continue bombing and Drazan continues swinging?

Should be able to have a post up in EST afternoon.

I approve of Oios' plan. Paste enhanced flasks AWAY.

Istiel can get the door when we all run out- she should be able to make the fort saves. But i have the feeling we won't trap many inside. It clearly has a malevolent intelligence .

It might be intelligent, but it still has to get onto us to hurt us.

How's this for a modification? This round Imix spends his turn spreading paste on flammable stuff. The rest of us bomb. Then next round we run out, swarm comes in, we run out, Isitel runs out, tosses another fire in and shuts the door.

If that's good Oios can in game RP the order. I'm assuming the tins of paste and the alchemist fire are easily grabbable from the open haversack?

I'm good with your initial suggestion, I was just making a prediction because I enjoy making baseless speculations. I think we're on the right track here and will do the door closing as we flee the hut.

No reason why we can't set a trap as well as go bombing :).

Imix did channel at the end of round 2, right? Not sure why Oios is so injured.

One bleed and 5 from a negative level.

Healing should heal the bleed though, right?

Problem Oios- Istiel doesn't have another alchemists flask, unless we say he gave her one before they left the hut?

There is one alchemist fire in the haversack and one in Oios' hand right now that i know of.

Lol, the swarm rolled a 20 on its reflex save. Great.

Uh, you did take the bag, right Oios?

Technically Imix took a flask and an Ifrit's blood, rather than paste (he didn't apply paste). Ifrit's blood looks a lot like Alchemist's fire. It makes your weapons do 1 point of fire damage in addition to weapon damage. Not a lot of fire, but possibly enough to ignite the paste. But in the rain... under attack... threatened... VERY similar look.

Vulnerable to area effects! That includes alchemist's fire?

Naira: Look at getting some sort of area effect as soon as you can, I think. Until then your blast is pretty much a sling :(
One of the things I was not so keen about with the Destruction sphere. I would have preferred a single square area effect as the default.

Problem Oios- Istiel doesn't have another alchemists flask, unless we say he gave her one before they left the hut?

If Oios has the actions, we can say he gave you a flask.

If the others are nauseated then Oios will throw his flask at a space that has paste on it (DC 5 right?)

The paste wasn't enough to keep burning itself, so there's no square to aim at (you applied a little to the bottle that I adjudicated would do 1d6 extra damage. I've also given you all a really easy touch AC with the alchemists fires, as I figure with a swarm your really aiming at an area, rather than the swarm.

The mechanics for the paste go like this: for each round you spread the paste on a five-foot square, that square will take 1 extra d6 of damage (so three rounds, 3d6 damage). The paste's explosion will also increase in range by one square radius, so 3d6 damage to the square that the paste is in, 2d6 in the next squares, 1d6 in the squares after that. The fire will also die down slowly, doing 1d6 less damage each round in the square that the paste was spread in.

Since the paste was just applied to the bottle, I ruled that the paste would amplify the AF adding +1d6 damage. It is a good boost, but the main purpose of the paste is to be used to bring down large structures if you've got the time to apply lots of it.

Technically Imix took a flask and an Ifrit's blood, rather than paste (he didn't apply paste). Ifrit's blood looks a lot like Alchemist's fire. It makes your weapons do 1 point of fire damage in addition to weapon damage. Not a lot of fire, but possibly enough to ignite the paste. But in the rain... under attack... threatened... VERY similar look.

Yeah, that's true. That's what I get for trying to bang out a combat post on my lunch hour. Weirdly enough, the second roll was a "1" so the damage works out the same.

Vulnerable to area effects! That includes alchemist's fire?

See above. Stupid lunch hours. Monster's stats are updated.

Sorry GMBP, this sounds like a hard fight.
My thought was more close the door to buy some time, channel some healing, put the paste and the ifrit's fire on the outside of the building. Hopefully our engineer is smart enough to know what holes we'd need to block, and how to turn a hut into a kiln.
I figure smoke damage from being inside a burning building is probably as good as anything else for killing them.

Curious question: seems to me with the door shut, the only major hole in is the chimney, and those roof-gap windows? If we put fire in the windows it would hurt the bugs coming out, right?

A bit less rain and a LOT more wind would help, as well.

Ah, ok. I forgot that it takes a full round to apply paste to an area. Can we make it three actions to do that?

Because in the first round in the hut Oios spent an action to spread some paste. He did so in the second round in the hut as well. The third round in the hut can we change Oio's move to as follows?

Act One: Spread paste around to finish spreading paste in one square
Act Two: Move out
Act Three: Retrieve his own alchemist flask for someone else to throw into the square with the paste on it and then shut the door.

We had 4 alchemst fire's in the bag and Oios has one of his own. We used two in the initial bombing as Imix used an Ifrit blood instead I think. There's still 2 alchemist fires in the open bag that anyone can take as well as the one in Oios' hand. Might as well use as many of them as we can on this fight.

Idea being that the explosion would hurt the swarm and cause the hut to catch on fire to continue damaging the swarm while it spends a little time trying to escape. In the meanwhile we regroup.

As well I think Drazan can set the door on fire pretty well to increase the temperature and smoke problems for the swarm.

Nah, Imix took an Alchemist's Fire AND an Ifrit's blood.
Remember that if we can set the house on fire the smoke will probably kill them faster than the heat.

Right.

So we have one Fire in the bag, one fire in Oios' hand, and Isitel, Drazan, and Naira still to go.

We should have enough to make it a very bad day for the swarm.

How beat up is the swarm looking, just in terms of it's volume and density compared to how it started?

I'm going to wait for you guys to figure this out before i post. Istiel can't do anything against the swarm, so direct her as needed.

A lot depends on whether you made your Fort Save :)

A lot depends on whether you made your Fort Save :)

Magic 8 ball says "Yes".

Cool. Oios already gave his orders IC. If DM says that three actions in three rounds counts as a full round action to have some paste on the floor than the instruction makes sense.

Naira can join in on the bombing fun if she wants or just shut the door.

Drazan can then start setting the hut on fire from the outside while the explosion starts a fire on the inside.

So... is there a square of paste to aim at DM?

OK, I understand now.

Splitting the paste action up over three rounds works fine.

There is a square to aim at in the hut. If you move out of the hut and then chuck flasks, we'll say that the square has cover from the doorway, so touch AC is 9.

Meetings into the night today. I'll move us on tomorrow if everyone hasn't checked in by then.

There's a fire I'm going to have to put out in the near future that will entail me working off campus for a few days, in which case, lunchtime posting may not be possible as I'll be in a warehouse. I'll try and post at night at that time, but I'll also have a two hour commute, so we'll see how it goes then - just wanted to let you all know.

I'll let you know with more detail when I have more information.

For some reason after i read that I'm imagining BP illegally trafficking historical artifacts.

Oios- for this to work Istiel will have had to have grabbed the last alchemist fire in the bag instead of a potion of CMW.

I'm fine with changing that action if BP is, simply under the guise we would have discussed this plan IC while Oios was spreading paste.

Ironic that you're putting a fire out while we're starting a fire up!

TWO HOUR commute?

Yeah, my skills aren't too great here. I am more about control than anything else, and a swarm messes that up quite a bit. I took the destructive sphere mostly to contribute something when I couldn't do much else, and so I could not worry about weapons.

Might look into taking some AoE abilities in the future, but in truth my abilities are largely utility based.

Should Drazan continue to act from round to round or are his 5 rounds worth of actions pretty much locked in already per BP's request?

Drazan can spend an action to put his back up against the hut to aid in setting it on fire, but given he already provided rolls for enough 5 rounds I'm fine either way.

We can modify his rolls as needed. I'll take off the lowest roll this round.

Woo! We Did It! High Five!

Great job everyone! On to the next horror :)

Wanted to take a moment to reiterate this is AWESOME, BP.

Will post about our next obstacles when I get home, currently babysitting a robot and making sure it doesn't get fungus chunks stuck inside of it.

FYI

The robot DID get chunks of fungus stuck in it.

Anyway.

So we have two leads here- We can "split up" or check these things one at a time.

the bird skull fetishes all just pointed north past Thom's hut, and there's a scream from the well.

The bird-priest that set this all up has probably noticed our shenanigans by now, and I wouldn't be surprised if the skulls were pointing towards it, or some other horrible thing.

There are four skinned bodies in the well and some kind of darkness spell at the bottom. There were also three pieces of stone jutting out of the wall at the bottom of the well. Not sure what the scream is, but Istiel is checking it out/getting her rope. Can anyone make a light spell or something similar to see what's at the bottom?

I agree - that was an incredibly memorable battle! Beautifully contrived & described :)

Can I take ten on knowledge (engineering?) to see if I can answer Istiel's question before I post?

Thanks for the kind words! This whole encounter was ad-hoc. You guys threw me for a loop by detonating the fetish, and I needed something cool to happen that would fit into the larger narrative. It took me a couple of days to figure out what that would be.

I'll get a post up later today explaining a little more what is going on in the well, so that Naira can fill you all in.

FYI

The robot DID get chunks of fungus stuck in it.

I WANT YOUR JOB!

Little Timmy is drowning in the well, and it may have been my water that done him in.

No time to post but Oios warping can help in the well.

Little Timmy is drowning in the well, and it may have been my water that done him in.

** spoiler omitted **

Oooops. Well. (ha) Not sure what we can do about it. Istiel can swim well, but she has no darkvision and will surely be blind.

If Naira has swim speed and underwater breathing (or good enough... given your character I asssume Naira has something) we could attach a rope to her and she could take a look... if she wants to swim with a bunch of skinned corpses.

I do have a swim speed, though I cannot breathe underwater. I think I am the best swimmer (+11), despite my poor strength score ;) Doesn't take much when you have that +8 Racial bonus. Without me, that rain isn't stopping though, just to keep in mind. I've already dealt with skinned corpses today, what can a few more add that dissecting a skin stealer doesn't?

I have diver's gear, detailed below.

Oohhh that diver kit is nice.

... but why does it have a pound of soap?

If you're up for personally inspecting Shadeholme's well systems, have at it!