Ziggurat of Lost Souls: Mummy's Mask in the Burnt World of Athas

Game Master Thackery Baxter J Thorington

Sounds good. Thanks!

Checking in.

Same.

Ditto.

The sun beats down...

sorry, holiday and competition happening saturday. I've been getting home around 8pm every night (including the weekends) trying to get robots up to snuff.

thanks for being patient with me.

Bug can't relly contribute much to this scene, but I'd like to recommend a counter-ambush instead of a first strike. That lets us keep our end of the bargain.

We can assume they'll try to kill us in our sleep, so we pretend to sleep and jump them when they come for us. Or something like that.

I agree, I don't want to start anything, but I'll sure be ready to finish it.

Posted your idea. Think I found a way to link it to you in a roundabout way.

Nicely done. :)

I mean the "lure them elsewhere" part of my post was leaving room for that.

GM: is there terrain to work with for a counter-ambush? E.g., a small gulch or valley?

I'm not sure we need to take things that far. Going somewhere else might tip them off. If you want to keep them funneled from one direction, maybe we can use the wagons? Setting two of them at 90 degrees might be enough.

I was thinking we just feign unawareness and let them think they are catching us off-guard.

Of course, i'm not exactly the right person to be making decisions. Whatever you all decide, Bug will go along with. :)

Yaeh, we might as well set up our sleeping area so that they have to come from one direction.

I don't like the idea of getting in fights like this but I won't lose sleep over defending myself.

I'd like to share a tragedy with all of you.

I just found this feat, and it occurred to me that it would be really neat in this setting.

Then it occurred to me that since Bug has Catch off Guard and Throw Anything, she could keep using a weapon after she'd splintered it in someone. In fact, she could keep splintering it in people until it was completely destroyed. Nothing but bleeding splinters left.

Then I looked at my progress plan again. My build is so feat intensive that I can't squeeze a feat slot free until 13th level.

I'm heartbroken.

Yeah, I thought of moving the wagons too, but that's under Akiya's control. I suppose if we make the diplomacy checks along with the suggestions. I just know we don't want to get completely surrounded.

I bet if someone just said "hey, in this terrain, this wagon formation would be the good" he wouldn't argue. All of you have already proved your competence. It's not like there's any cost to him, so Sienna's Diplomacy should easily be enough to get him to put the wagons however we want them.

YOUR PATIENCE HAS BEEN REWARDED!!!!

TWO FIRST PLACE TROPHIES AND ONE THIRD PLACE TROPHY!!!!

HARD WORK (AND THE SLAVISH DEVOTION... ER THE GOODWILL OF MY PAW...PLAYERS) HAS WON THE DAY!!

Yes, my students learned what it felt like crush their enemies, see them driven before them, and hear the lamentations of their ...coaches (we aren't gender-biased in Lego robotics).

I'll post a map tonight. I'm REALLY sorry about the delays. My life is finally back to normal, so I can start actually being a halfway decent GM again.

Thanks for all your patience

Crush your enemies!

BOTS FOR THE BOT GOD
LEGOS FOR THE LEGO THRONE

ok, that's a lie, i'll be updating tomorrow, because i spent about 30 minutes staring at the wall, and thinking it was my computer screen (i'm STILL very tired).

Sleeep

check the map.. is that what you were thinking?

I was under the impression there was more than one wagon. Guess I was mistaken.

Yeah, that looks good!

I think we're now waiting for the GM to set the scene for the encounter, right?

I believe so, yes.

yup you're waiting for me to get off my lazy a$$ and do the thing i said i'd do

:-p

I'm guessing it's more busy than lazy :D

Ok, I'm a bit confused now. Based on the latest Gameplay post, Akiya's guards are not planning to tangle with us. I'd just as soon rather not start a fight if we don't have to.

The plan as I understood it was to go through our evening routine, and fake going to sleep (with weapons in our bedrolls and blankets covering the fact that we are still in armor, things like that) when it's the enemy's turn for watch rotation.

Then when they come for us, we're ready and we kill them.

I'm fine with that. I don't necessarily want to start anything, but I sure plan to survive it.

Yup, the plan was always to let them attack first. The caravan setup was to prevent them from being able to surround us.

So it’s like Beowulf, waiting for Grendel to approach before ripping the monster’s arm off

hi. Sorry. ya. i hid under a rock because.. reasons. But, i'm better now. ok moving on

Glad you're doing better. Don't be afraid to tell us when you're feeling overwhelmed by life and need some time to sort things out. I think we've all already proven that we are in this for the long haul. For being a bunch of sun-baked crazies we're a very supportive group.

Will do. Mostly, I didn't realize I was overwhelmed until it was too late... Oh

Will do. Mostly, I didn't realize I was overwhelmed until it was too late... Oh well

Hmm. I thought posting rates would have picked up once combat kicked off and the GM was back in action.

I'm really loving this game and really don't want it to die of attrition. I hope we can build some momentum.

sorry.

Avengers called...

and then called again.

Heh. I can see why you didn't want to do anything else for a while. Do you need to talk about it?

No... Spoilers... But OMG it was outstanding!!!

Here's hoping that slows them down!

Who has Bug's leash?

I thought it was Darzus, but Darzus' last post indicated that he just moved up next to Bug.

Yeah, lost track of who had it. We probably missed it in the setup for battle. It can be Darzus now, and he would be trying like mad to get bug to attack the unentangled guard

That works. I'll play off of however you decide to frame that.

Thanks for engaging with my super weird character concept. Since this game started its occured to me that it really isn't fair to present my character as a puzzle other characters are expected to solve, so I appreciate that the group is willing to indulge me.

The map doesn't seem to match the description of the action. Has it been updated?

No, i can't update it from work. I thought I mentioned this in the post. but, maybe that only happened in my head. I'll update it at home (in.. *sigh* 8ish hours)

No problem. I was just confused.

Replying to Rilkus' analysis over on Gameplay - moved to Discussion.

Yeah, the other thing to keep in mind is that while we may be CR 3, CR 3 is not the same as level 3 - CR 3 is a challenge that consumes some fraction of the resources of a party of four 3rd-level characters.

With Rilkus' numbers in mind, what we're seeing is part and parcel of Dark Sun combat: You typically have crummy AC because armor sucks, so you get hit a lot.
Now the important part is, since we are ACTUAL level 1, our hit points our low. In "original DS" you could tank stuff because you have the hit points of a 3rd level character; your gladiator has bonuses to AC with any armor (armor optimization), and tons of hit points, so even when the enemies do hit, the gladiator just takes it and keeps fighting. The goal is to out-damage the enemies - basically, almost any character that melees in Dark Sun fights in the way that a barbarian does in normal PF games: take hits, give back hits so damaging that you kill the enemy before they kill you.
Our hit points are low enough that this tactic can't work reliably for us, especially against enemies that are actually 3rd level.

That is very true. I think I was over-estimating how much awesomeness you got with the racial boosts. I missed a bit of the mark this time around, but you're doing OK. So. yay. I'll have it more tweaked within the next two combats.

The important thing to remember is that character level boosts matter most at low levels. By 3rd or 4th level the bonuses we have now will matter a lot less.

Right now we are all playing rocket tag and it's dangerous as hell. Kinda suits the setting I guess.